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Colorado Waters. 



DENVER: 

CHAIN, HARDY & CO 

BOOKSELLERS & PUBLISHERS. 
1884. • 



WITH 



KOD AI^D LIISTE 



IN 



COLORADO WATERS. 



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' Wha ever heaxd o' a gude angler being a bad or indifferent man ? " 

— NOCTES. 






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V 



DEKYER 

CHAIN, HARDY & CO., 

Booksellers and Publishers. 

1884. - 






Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and 

eighty -four, by 

CHAIN, HARDY & CO., 

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



DAVID ATWOOD, 

PRINTER AND 6TERE0TYPER, 
MADISON, WIS. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Many Years Ago 7 

Over the Range 14 

Fisherman's Luck 22 

Agapae 31 

Black Lake in 1878 38 

Egotism and — Rods 51 

Troublesome 57 

Meteorological 64 

Mules 71 

Music and Meteorology • . 77 

Philosophy 85 

An Idle Morning at Grand Lake 93 

Camping with Ladies and — the Baby 99 

Boys and Burros 107 

He's No Sardine 124 

Under Difficulties 131 

His Sermon 141 



Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels 
With the hurs on his legs and the grass at his Jieels; 
No Dodger behind, his bandannas to share ; 
No Constable grumbling : ' You must n't walk there ! ' " 

— Holmes. 



MANY YEAES AGO. 




ORTY years ago — a big 
slice off the long end of 
one's life ! A broad river 
with its low-lying south 
shore heavily timbered 
and rich in early summer 
verdure; a long bridge 
with a multitude of low 
stone piers and trestle- 
work at top; in mid- 
stream, two miles awa}^, 
the black hull and tall 
masts of a man-o'-war, lying idly; between and beyond, 
the smooth bosom of the blue expanse dotted with fish- 
ing sloops under weather-beaten wings, moving lazily 
hither and yon; to the north, but invisible save a strag- 
gling outer edge of tumble-down houses — a possibility 
then — now, ''they tell me," a magnificent city; a de- 
cayed wharf with no signs of life, and draped in tangled 
sea- weed that came in with the last tide, the jagged and 
blackened piles stand brooding over the solemn stillness 
like melancholy sentinels sorrowing over a dead ambi- 
tion. The ripple of the waves is a melody and the air 
is fragrant with a brackish sweetness. 



8 MANY YEARS AGO. 

It lias been a bright clay, and the afternoon shadows 
are beginning to lengthen. They snggest to some an- 
other day's work nearly finished, another week drawing 
to a close; Saturday night, home and rest. To others 
they suggest — well, let that pass. To a little fellow, 
barefoot, coatless and with a ragged straw hat, who 
crawls out from one of the center piers of the old bridge, 
these shadows of the closing May day are ominous, yet 
his forebodino^s are not unmixed with the rose-hued 
pleastire of a day well spent. He did think of that river 
below him, twenty-five feet deep, but that was an attrac- 
tion. He did think of the very near future and — but 
no matter; his thoughts were bright enough as he 
hauled up after him a string of perch as long as his 
precious body, and as a fit'^limax to his magnificent 
catch, an eel at least two and a half feet long and thick 
as his captor's arm. What a struggle he had enjoyed 
with that eel before he got it to the top of the pier. His 
hand-line was a hopeless snarl; twice he had come 
within a hair's-breadth of going overboard, but the un- 
fortunate eel had succumbed to juvenile activity and 
zeal. What ten-year-old could boast comparison, as 
with the day's trophies over his shoulder he plodded his 
way home? He felt himself an object of interest and 
envy to his fellows, and told with condescension, not 
arrogance, his experience with that eel. 

Success will often take an old boy, let alone a young 
one, off his feet; it sometimes leads to indiscretion and 
results in worse than failure, and again is the corner- 
stone of a noble monument. That boy had fished 
with success off that pier more than once, but had kept 
his fish pole and had left the evidences of his disobedi- 



MAXY YEARS AGO. 9 

ence at a friendly neiglibor's. This day he marclied 
straight home, fishpole and all. The sable ruler of the 
kitchen confirmed, upon sight, the lurking apprehen- 
sion that would not down in spite of triumph. 

"Ah, honey! Whar's you bin dis livelong day? Miss 
Mary's gwine to give it to 3^ou. We's been ahuntin' an' 
trapsin' all ober dis here town, an' yo' pa — he was jes 
gwine ." 

But the " ambiguous givings out " of the sable god- 
dess were cut short by the appearance of Miss Mary in 
person. She was a stately dame in those days, with a 
wealth of dark hair and with brown eyes that had in 
them, ah, such a world of love for that barefoot, white- 
haired urchin. And she had, too, a quiet way of talking 
that went right into the little fellow's ears and down 
about his heart and lingered there. No need to ask 
him where he had been; she onl}" looked at him and the 
fish, a serious, yet a loving look withal, took his hand 
and led him in to the head of the family. Court was at 
once convened. 

" What shall we do with this boy? " 

He to whom this inquiry was addressed took in the 
situation at a glance. The glance was a dark one, but 
it quickly showed the silver lining. 

"Wash him, and give him some clean clothes." 

" But," she remonstrated, " this will never do; he will 
be drowned some day. How often must I forbid you 
going near the river? " 

" I dun'no, mother." 

''What is that round j^our leg? " 

" An eel skin." 

" Why did you tie it there? " 



10 MANY YEARS AGO. 

" To keep off cramp." 

" Keep off cramp ! What does the boy mean ? " There 
was a look of wonderment in the brown eyes, and of 
merriment in the grey. The colored member of the 
court volunteered an explanation, and wound up with 
the prophecy: 

"Dat chile'll neber be drownded. Miss Mary; I tell 
you so long as he wear dat eel skin he'll nebber hab de 
cramp, an' he kin swim; you ha'ar me, Miss Mary. 
Why, bless yo' stars, honey, dat chile done swim dat 
ribber las' Saturday, he did; I heerd 'em tellin' it." 

'' Heard who telling it? " broke in the president. 

"Why, de chillun, ob cose. Dat Buckingham boy 
he bantered the chile an' took his close ober in de skiff, 
and Mar's Lou, he done follered, he did, an' dat ribber 
a mile wide." 

The animated and confident manner of Jane did not 
lessen the anxious, even horrified, expression in the 
brown eyes, but the grey were a study as the owner 
drew the abashed urchin to him, with the inquiry; 

" Is it true, my boy ? " 

"Yes, father." 

" Go bring me your fishing tackle." 

It was a sorry looking outfit — a fraction of a cane 
pole, about ten feet of a common line, and an indiffer- 
ent hook looped on the end. The hand line was of 
better material, but a wreck — a very Gordian knot. 
They were dubiously but promptly passed over for in- 
spection. 

" Throw these into the stove — and, Jane, you make 
kindling wood of this pole." 

"Oh, father!" The boy's lips quivered, the eyes 



MANY YEARS AGO. 11 

filled, but the owner of the grey eyes gently held back 
the appealing hand that would have rescued the precious 
treasures. 

^'Hold on, my boy; do not misunderstand; papa will 
trust you; you shall have the best tackle in town." 

"Why do you deal with the boy in this way?" re- 
monstrated the mother. 

"Why? Because I myself was a boy once, and I 
don't want to forget it." 

The grey eyes were the first to close — it is many a 
long year since — and the old boy's fill a little now, as 
he reverently thinks of that day. 

But the boy drifted with the tide, over the Blue 
Ridge and the Alleghenies, and twenty odd years ago 
he anchored in the wilderness, where Denver now 
stands, to surprise you folks from down East. 

Do we have fishing in the Rocky Mountains? Aye, 
that we do, and right royal sport it is. 

One day, nineteen years ago this summer, a neighbor 
came into my cabin and wanted to know of a young 
married woman there if she could not spare her Bene- 
dict for, say three days. He was fish hungry, this 
neighbor; was going off into the mountains, and 
wanted company. Of course she could; was glad to be 
rid of him. And so early next morning old Charlie 
was hitched to the buckboard. At five o'clock that 
same day there was a tent pitched in a little valley upon 
Bear creek, thirty-five miles from home, with two pairs 
of blankets, a coffee pot, two tin cups and a frying pan; 
not a soul or a habitation within twenty miles of us; a 
beautiful mountain stream, clear as crj^stal, cold as ice, 
and teeming with trout. What would you have, 



12 MAl^Y YEARS AGO. 

money? Why, bless your soul, money was at a dis- 
count; there were acres of it a little way o£f, only for 
the digging. 

In those days fishing tackle was scarce, and a plum- 
bush pole and linen line were the best in the land. 
Flies were a novelty to me, but my friend had a 
dozen or so, some that he had saved over from more 
civilized times, and that had got out here by mistake. 
He divided with me, told me to fasten one upon the 
end of my line and "skitter it over the water." This 
was my first and only instruction in trout fishing. 
" Skittering " was as novel to me as the fish, but my 
Professor was a Cambridge man with glasses, and I did 
not want him to feel that my education had been en- 
tirely neglected. I took my pole and instruction in 
silence, and walked a quarter of a mile up the creek. 
Pure instinct? Yes, I walked up stream for the single 
purpose of fishing down; it came just as naturally as 
swimming in deep water. I found a place clear of bushes 
for a few rods, where the current swept directly into my 
shore and out again, forming an eddy. I thought it a 
" likely place." I gave that plum sapling a swing and 
landed the fl}^, in which I had no confidence whatever, 
just at the edge of the swirl. It had no sooner touched 
the water than I saw a salmon-colored mouth, felt a tug, 
and the following second my first trout was flying over 
my head. I deliberately put down that pole and walked 
out to investigate. There was no doubt about it; there 
he lay, kicking and gasping his life ou . on the green 
grass, his bright colors more beautiful by the contrast. 
He was near a foot long, and I put my hand upon him as 
gently as though he had been an immortal first born. It 



MANY YEARS AGO. 13 

was noi a dream. When he was dead I strung him upon 
a forked stick, went back to the eddy and caught three 
others, and wondered if all the trout in that stream were 
twins. I had already become gentler, too, even with the 
unwieldy plum sapling. I found their mouths were 
not made of cast iron nor copper lined. By the time I 
had fished down to camp, and with my ten trout, I felt 
equal to the business of the morrow. My friend, of 
course, had better luck, having passed his novitiate, but 
he complimented me in saying that I ''took to it natur- 
ally." 

Camping out was no novelty, but fresh trout was a 
revelation, and that night we had no bad dreams under 
our canvas. The next evening found us preparing 
nearly, what a Yankee would call, two patent pails, of 
trout to take home to our friends and neighbors. 

And here I am moved to say that ours is a noble fel- 
lowship; it is a gentle craft we cultivate, one that should 
beget brotherly love and all things charitable; and if 
any of you have, as I hope you have, a little white-haired 
tot who seems inclined to follow you down stream upon 
summer days, do not say nay, but let your prayer be: 
"Lord, keep my memory green." 




OYEE THE EAE"GE. 




F course it is never agreeable to 
go camping; it is not conven- 
ient to carry about with one 
bedsteads, chairs, bureaus, wasb- 
stands, batb-tubs, and such like 
X)lunder deemed essential to com- 
fort. And then again it is not 
comfortable to live out doors like a tramp. It is either 
too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet, — that is for a 
certain large class of human beings. They wonder 
why one will forego the comforts of our civilized ways 
for those of the Ute. But perhaps we may get to the 
solution of the problem further on. 

It was dusty when our party left Idaho for a fifty- 
mile drive to Hot Sulphur Springs. Of course it was 
dusty; the dust was in the road, in our eyes and mouths, 
throats and lungs, just for our discomfort, and the toll- 
road companies were never known to keep sprinklers. 
So we traveled in a cloud for half an hour, then it be- 
gan to rain. Of course it did; the first rain-storm for 
three weeks; we got damp, then we forgot the dust, and 
were doggedly satisfied that if pleasure had not been 
one of our objects in going camping it would not have 
rained. We got to Empire; it rained till dark, and 



OVER THE RAKGE. 15 

everybody said the rainy season had begun in earnest; 
that it was liable to keep on raining for three weeks to 
get even with the " dr}^ spell," and we went to bed feel- 
ing very much encouraged. There is an exasperating 
sententiousness about the mountain weather prophet 
that prevails nowhere else on the globe, 1 verily believe; 
when he tells you what the weather is, or is going to 
be, you uiust believe him. You dare not even express 
a hope that he may be mistaken. But even this gentry, 
one soon begins to believe, is essential to comfort; the 
weather prophet is the means of agreeable disappoint- 
ment. Our weather prophet was the most entertaining 
old liar that ever contributed to the misery of a tender- 
foot or the mortification of a moss-back. The sun 
never broke over the eastern hills more gloriously than 
on the eventful next morning; he seemed to come up 
in a spirit of exultation, as if aware that the prophet 
at Empire had been maligning him. But the prophet 
was not overcome; far from it; the appearance of the 
sun was a '^ weather breeder," and the cheerful old at- 
mospheric vaticinator swore that before we could reach 
the summit of the range it would and must rain, and 
snow and hail and freeze and thaw and blow and 

the . We bade him good morning sadlj^, and took 

the road with a determination to wrest comfort, if 
necessary, from the worst " spell of weather " the range 
could boast. 

The rain of the day before was the first element to 
lend its influence to the day's enjoyment; it had sweet- 
ened the air, if Colorado mountain air is ever otherwise; 
it had laid the dust, and the road was a marvel of excel- 
lence — for a toll road; it had sharpened the fragrance 



16 OYER THE RAl^GE. 

of the pines, and the wild flowers, lacking in perfume, 
made amends by such a wealth of beauty that one 
became lost in the multitude of bright colors. 

We were a happy party that rode up through the 
Devil's Gate to encounter punishment. Leaving the 
magnificent mass of granite cliffs reaching a thousand 
feet high, and wondering if he who should follow next 
would experience the same degree of veneration for the 
mighty pile, we began the ascent of Berthoud Pass. 
We did not climb; there is no climbing to be done, 
except one escapes over a precipice, and has an ambition 
to get back. Strolling leisurely along, the white- 
capped range would, from time to time, reveal itself 
through the green of the pines, while to the left of us 
plunged down from the snowy heights the beautiful 
mountain stream, here not degraded and a satire on its 
name. Its banks are fringed with rich-colored mosses 
and decked with flowers, and the beautiful firs, waved 
by the gentle breeze, seem to be bowing an accompani- 
ment to the music of the crystal waters at their feet. 
As we go on, the sharp ridge of Red Mountain comes 
into view, guarded on the east by a monster hill, which 
none of our ingenious explorers, so generous in giving 
names,' have condescended to dignify with a title. Its 
broad base washed by the rushing torrent, its sides 
clothed in a mantle of living green away up to the 
sharp line which marks the limit of the timber growth, 
and yet on and up the eye glances over the granite, 
with its azure background, until the vast pile is dia- 
demed with a fleecy cloud. It is a noble mountain, and 
involuntarily I took off my hat to it, wondering if the 
civil engineers, explorers, and the like, had really the 



OVER THE RANGE. 17 

monopoly of the love and veneration for the beautiful. 
Red Mountain ! a carmine-colored excrescence dignified 
with a name, and this overtopping evidence of Grod's 
handiwork, like a giant overlooking a pigmy, without 
anything to distinguish it from its surroundings, except 
its own magnificence. Well, that is enough. 

But at this rate we will never get into that " infernal 
spell of weather " we are seeking. Up the gorge on 
the right, toward the summit, an ominous cloud begins 
to creep upon the blue, and we begin to think the prophet 
will, after all, command respect, but are doomed 
to disappointment. As the black mass rises over the 
summit we notice a rift in its center, soon it widens, 
goes to the right and left, the blue expands, and we are 
not deprived of a minute's sunshine. We look down 
into the gorge and see the beautiful stream dancing 
through the firs, so far below its breadth is shrunk to a 
hand-span, looking now like an emerald ribbon flecked 
with white, and its rude noise dies into a gentle mur- 
mur as a turn in the road shuts it out from sight. On 
and up; disappointed about the storm nearing the 
summit, reaching out for the snow and the Alpine prim- 
rose, gorgeous in crimson and royal purple; finding 
the flowers, but the snow, alas that has been gone this 
three weeks, except a dirt-begrimed bushel or so a few 
rods from the station. 

It is high noon, and, for the first time, I stand upon 
the " backbone of the continent," and a good deal of a 
backbone it is, here only eleven thousand four hundred 
and odd feet high. There must have been trouble in 
the neighborhood when the continent got its back up 
to this extent; the agitation experienced in the fram- 
2 



18 OVEE THE RANGE. 

ing and signing of the Declaration of Independence was 
evidently trifling in comparison. I did not look down 
into the Pacific, but saw where the waters start that go 
that way. Never having seen any of them before, 1 
took a mouthful, and from my recollection of those on 
the Atlantic side I thought I detected a resemblance. 
The mercury stood at 55° and we had lunch, taken with a 
healthy appetite sharpened by a three miles walk in the 
pure light air. Among the grand mountains of the 
snowy range to the north, I thought I recognized at 
least one familiar peak, but there was considerable dif- 
ference of opinion in the party, including Gaskill, the 
only resident on the summit. This lack of absolute 
certainty struck me as a little extraordinary, because 
everybody is usually filled with correct information, and 
a mountaineer by instinct; I sighed for a tender-foot. 

Lunch concluded, we continued on our way. About 
three miles by the road, down the western slope, a 
pretty mountain brook comes tumbling down from the 
range, and on the bank, surrounded by wild flowers, I 
noticed an oblong heap of stones — the rude monu- 
ment of an unfortunate Swede who perished near by 
early in the spring of the previous year. Frank, our 
driver, told us how the ill-fated Norseman had started 
with a companion from Billy Cozzens' at the head of 
the Park. They carried nothing save their blankets 
slung over their shoulders. It was afternoon, and they 
had " struck out" for the summit, but were met by a 
blinding storm; how they succeeded in making their 
way to within a couple of miles of their destination 
and safety, when the unfortunate, exhausted and dis- 
couraged, sank down into the huge drifts and to sleep; 



OYER THE RANGE. 19 

how the other, stranger and more resolute, yet power- 
less to arouse his dying friend, floundered back to a de- 
serted cabin, built a fire and kept himself from freezing, 
unable to procure assistance till the following day. 
But when the news reached Cozzens' there was no 
lack of quick and experienced effort, though they felt, 
those strong hearts, as they labored on and up through 
the great masses of snow, that they were going not to 
the rescue of a life. They hoped he might have been 
wise and strong enough to burrow into the drifts, but 
they found him with one arm clasping a small dead 
pine, just where his companion had left him, covered 
partly by the white mantle that had proved his death 
and his winding sheet. They who loved him best 
would not have selected a more inviting spot for his 
sepulture than did those strangers. 

From this Frank drifted off to an adventure of his 
own and his cousin Glenn, on this same range, a few 
winters before. They were both mere boys, of sixteen 
and eighteen, "shoeing it," each with a light pack, and 
determined to make the head of the Park before sun- 
down. With the mercury rapidly going down with 
the sun, the lads started cheerfully over the crust and 
had got near the spot where the cabin was built, when, 
by some accident, one of Frank's shoes snapped in two, 
and he plunged into the drift. The loss of a snow shoe 
at such a time and place was a mishap that was by no 
means trivial. It was simply impossible to go on; to 
remain, of course, was almost certain death. The bo3's 
set their wits to work, without shedding any tears. 
Fortunately, one of them had several balls of sacking 
twine, which he had bought and was carrying into the 



20 OYER THE EAI^GE. 

Park. Upon that slender thread hung the safety of one 
at least. Frank laid down on the snow, to get as ranch 
surface as possible upon the treacherous crust, and held 
on to the end of the string while his cousin went on till 
it was all paid out. Then the cousin slipped off the 
shoes, tied them to his end, Frank drew them up to 
himself, get on them, went on down past his cousin, 
leaving him an end of the line. When he reached his 
limit, he slipped off the shoes in turn, the cousin 
hauled them up, and so alternating, they worked their 
way down to the foot of the rauge, where the trail was 
partly broken. 

" You bet, I was glad to see that trail," he concluded, 
with a smile that had something serious in it. 

On down the glorious mountain road we make our 
way at a lively trot, marking the increase in the volume 
of the Frazier as the range is left behind. After de- 
scending some four thousand feet or more, we enter 
upon an avenue over a mile in length, straight as an 
engineer can run a line, and adorned on either side with 
stately pines, that keep off the heat. At the other end 
we discern the comfortable cabin of Cozzens, and as we 
emerge from the shelter of the trees the head of the 
Park is spread out into a broad valley before us, guarded 
by low-lying hills, while here and there against the 
clear blue sky looms up an occasional snow-capped peak. 
Bright colors everywhere — the green of the meadow 
and the darker shade of the pine, the silver-lined leaf of 
the white-trunked aspen, and flowers countless as the 
stars, reposing tranquilly under the slanting rays of the 
afternoon sun. A picture to defy the skill of the artist, 
but to fill him with admiration. 



OVER THE RANGE. 21 

We must remain over night; of course; because the 
team needs a rest, and the twenty odd miles to our des- 
tination will be an easy daj^'s drive for the morrow. 
And to stop means fresh trout for supper and break- 
fast, with nice cream in the coffee, helped out with light 
bread and sweet butter; perhaps an elk steak, or a tit- 
bit from a mule deer cooked to a turn — "a righteous 
man regardeth the life of his beast/' Besides the for- 
tieth parallel is to be crossed, before we reach the Springs, 
and the magnificence of that must be reserved for day- 
light inspection. 




riSHEEMAN'S LUCK. 




_.<<^^^^^^ r> HE distance between Coz- 
zens' and Hot Sulphur 
Springs was accomplished 
^\ without accident, and in time 
for dinner. Camp made, the 
Springs, in which my com- 
rade, the Doctor, took much 
interest, were inspected. The 
curative properties of the waters have been much talked 
of and written about, but not overestimated; they are 
helpful and invigorating for the invalid, and a source of 
gratification, if not a novelty, to the pleasure seeker. 
The Indians hold them in great veneration; this of itself 
is a recommendation, for, as a rule, the Ute has no lik- 
ing for water. The Doctor labored under the impression 
that I needed a bath; a hot bath, and said so unequivo- 
cally; besides, not to take a bath, even if the bath took 
your hide, would be a violation of the sacred rule of the 
place, and subject one to the charge of eccentricity. I 
do not fancy eccentric people nor enthusiastic folk; be- 
side, every acquaintance I might meet would be sure to 
exclaim with marked astonishment: "What! didn't 
take a bath!" The thing would become monotonous. 
I consented to take the bath. 



fisherman's luck. 23 

The Doctor went ahead like one accustomed to the 
treatment. It was night; the place was provided with 
a single lamp that made the darkness unearthly; the 
fumes of the sulphur were strong and suggestive; I 
looked down into the steaming pool with the trepida- 
tion that must come over a sinner in the heat of an 
orthodox revival. The Doctor waded out like a minis- 
ter at the ordinance of baptism, and called to me to 
" come down." I said I was coming. I went. The 
steps were very firm, clean and provided with a strong 
rail, but I didn't hurry. I put one foot in and took it 
out right away; when I found it was not raw I put it 
back, and concluded as the Doctor was not yet parboiled 
I might put in the other foot; but I did not go in a 
foot at a time, only about an inch. Then I asked the 
Doctor what church he belonged to, and started to go 
out when he said he was a Methodist. I sat down on 
the steps, inhaled the sulphur and looked at him floun- 
dering round in that pool like a school of porpoises out 
at sea. He told me to try it again. I said I was sleepy 
and wanted to go to bed. Then he said it would make 
my hair grow, and I told him I didn't want any hair, 
that I had had it pulled out on purpose before I was 
married. Then he said it would make me fat; I told 
him I was dieting to take off superfluous flesh. Then 
he said he would tell what he insinuated was generally 
suspected, that I was afraid of water; I told him I didn't 
care. Finally he swore that if I did not get off that 
perch and come down into the bath, he'd destroy the 
commissaries and refuse to show me any of the trout- 
pools in the Park. I was inspired to say I'd try it 
again; he had been there five minutes at least and was 



24 fisherman's luck. 

not cooked, and if he could stand it that long with his 
religious training, I thought I might venture on as 
many seconds. But I made haste slowly, got in by de- 
grees and laid down. Then the Doctor got under the 
" shower bath," where the water tumbles, six feet or 
more in a great stream, into the pool; he wanted me to 
try that. But I told him I was very well satisfied where 
I was, and that I did not approve of shower baths, any 
way; then I went on to explain to him the deleterious 
effects of too much bathing, and of shower baths in par- 
ticular. I talked to him as well as I could for ten min- 
utes, sitting the while upon the bottom of the pool 
with the water up to my chin; but he would not be 
convinced. I think the situation and the noise of the 
water-fall may have detracted somewhat from the force 
of my argument. The Doctor said it was time to get 
out, but having become warmed up on the subject, I 
deemed this a mere evasion, and told him not to hurry; 
that I could convince him of the correctness of my 
theory inside a half hour. He said he had no doubt of 
it if I remained where I was for that length of time. 
He had, to some extent, won my confidence; by his 
combined advice and threats he had enabled me to real- 
ize an ideal, and at the same time be in the fashion, and 
this not in the days of miracles. When I got out of 
that bath I felt as I have heard men say they felt after 
a hard day's work. I took my blankets, laid on the 
ground and slept the sleep of godliness. Some of those 
fellows whose consciences are demoralized had better try 
this medicine instead of opium; it is at least a safer 
narcotic. One can go to bed with better assurance that 
in a day or so a servant will not be peering over the 



nSHERMAI^'s LUCK. 25 

transom and finding a subject for the coroner. It is 
more satisfactory, too, in such emergencies, in that it 
removes the doubts of friends, if one has any, as well 
as of the public, as to " the cause," and entitles one to 
Christian burial. 

Awakened the next day by that invaluable servant to 
us all shining in my face, I reminded the Doctor of his 
promise concerning the trout pools. So we were up 
betimes, had breakfast, the horses saddled, and with 
creels capable of fourteen pounds each, and a stock of 
tackle sufficient to start a store, we were off across the 
Grand, and over the hills for the anticipated pleasure 
down stream, to a place where the Doctor was sure no 
one had been. The horses of tourists and amateur fish- 
ermen usually buck and raise the devil when starting 
out on such a jaunt, and I was disappointed that the 
Doctor's animal did not bow his back, go up, and come 
down stiff-legged. I like to see a horse buck when 
somebody else is on him, and I like to hear the man 
pray, if he is able, when he feels the ground and glances 
round to see who is laughing at him. An even-tem- 
pered gentleman like the Doctor would have afforded an 
enviable example of Christian fortitude under such 
circumstances — his horse did not buck, but led the 
way over the hills as quietly as a cow going out to 
pasture. 

We kept away from the river, traveled over high 
ground, and through an upland of black sage brush 
that would rival the mesa between Pueblo and Cafion. 
We followed an Indian trail, and followed it so long 
that I began to inquire when we were to reach my 
much coveted destination. The Doctor called my atten- 



26 fisherman's luck. 

tion to a belt of timber some distance ahead, and said 
we were " going up there." I asked him if he expected 
that trout roosted like sage hens, and informed him 
that if such had been his experience, it had not been 
mine, and that I was going to find water. He told me to 
do as I pleased, so I struck off toward the Grand — I like 
to be independent sometimes. My horse went scram- 
bling through the thick sage brush, catching his toes in 
the roots and threatening to throw me over his head 
every few minutes, until finally he stopped at the bank of 
the river. It was fifty feet, at least, down to the water. 
I looked up stream half a mile, then down to the belt of 
timber, and that same bank presented itself at an ag- 
gravating angle of about ninety degrees. I don't like 
Indians, nor any of their belongings, as a general rule, 
but I went cheerfully back to that trail, and quietly 
followed in the Doctor's wake. When I caught up, the 
Doctor said in a mild sort of way that it was generally 
safe to keep on the trail. We walked our horses to the 
timber and into it, the Doctor in the lead. We got 
about half way round the mountain with a thousand 
or fifteen hundred feet of earth, rocks and trees below 
us, and as many above, when the Doctor discovered a 
" cut-off." He led the way for a few rods, when a tree 
about three feet in diameter barred further progress in 
that direction. We could not turn round, nor could 
we go on, so we got off, and persuaded the horses to 
climb perpendicularly fifty feet up to the trail. I was 
satisfied in my mind that the Doctor was more than 
ever convinced of the safety of keeping on the trail, 
but he did not say so to me. 
We kept on to Williams' Fork, and picketed our 



fisherman's luck. . 27 

horses about half a mile from the mouth. The Doctor 
then proposed that we " hoof it " over more hills. I 
began to be disgusted, but was away from home and at 
the mercy of this new-fangled fisherman. I didn't 
know an Indian trail from a cow path, and was as 
likely to get into one as the other. A trail, like 
the road of a civilized brother, leads to some place, but 

a cow path, . I pufied on behind, up a high ridge 

of rocks, and as soon as I could get the breath, told the 
Doctor I was obliged to him. We stood upon a Grand 
Canon in miniature. I want to describe it, but I can't. 
After dreaming over it awhile, the Doctor told me an 
incident in his experience concerning the ledge where 
we had precarious foothold, looking down into the 
seething waters several hundred feet below. The Doc- 
tor, Wm. H. Beard, the artist, Bayard Taylor and a 
prospector and mining man came over the trail a few years 
before on horseback, the Doctor in the lead, then the 
prospector, and, finally, the artist and the great traveler 
bringing up the rear. When the prospector passed the 
narrow ledge, barely sufiicient in width to allow a 
horseman to squeeze along, where one has to hang, as 
it were, like a fly on a wall, he became conscious that 
his saddle girths needed tightening. With the reck- 
lessness peculiar to his craft, he slipped off his mule, 
and was engaged in the necessary adjustment of his 
belly-band when Beard reached the narrow ledge and 
had to stop. The first intimation the Doctor had of 
anything wrong came in the way of an emphatic adju- 
ration, that might have been heard half a mile, for 
the blessed prospector to get out of that. The Doctor 
said he was glad the artist was not given to profanity, 



28 FISHERMAl^ S LUCK. 

though he said a great deal to the miner that the Doctor 
could not understand; it did not sound like English nor 
Dutch, nor any language the Doctor had ever heard, but 
hurled at the head of the miner from a two-foot trail 
hanging over five or six hundred feet of perpendicular 
granite, it seemed to have an accelerating effect. The 
miner led his mule to more convenient quarters without 
finishing his task, and the artist followed, not in 
silence, however; he did not seem to be able to get 
through his business with that miner for an hour. 

Looking down into the chasm, 1 suggested that it did 
not seem particularly " pokerish." The Doctor said it 
was well enough to say so when one was afoot, '^ but 
just try it horseback," in that ambiguous sort of way 
that always rouses one's determination to undertake it. 
I did a few days after, but in returning I led my horse. 
Getting through with his anecdote, the Doctor 
pointed to another pile of rocks half a mile further up 
the stream, and called my especial attention to a pool 
beneath, which, even at that distance, placed me under 
conviction that I could see trout therein, two feet long 
at least. I started to get some of them. Arrived there, 
we shipped our tackle, and I selected a spot under a 
pine-tree on one side of this pregnant pool, while the 
Doctor took the other. I made a cast with an anxiety 
indescribable; I knew I would have the first strike, and 
I did; the fly caught in the luxuriant foliage overhead. 
I tried to coax the blasted thing loose, but the more I 
prayed and persuaded the more obstinately the line in- 
terlaced itself. If there is anything more exasperating 
than to get a line fastened in a pine-tree, I want to 
know what it is; a "picked-up dinner" on wash-day 



FISHERMAN^'S LUCK. 29 

is Miss in comparison. Not being able to untangle the 
line, I tried to pull down the tree; then I took a seat on 
the bank and patiently renewed my leader. Meanwhile 
the Doctor was threshing the peaceful Avaters industri- 
ously. I asked him if he had caught anything; he 
said he was going to very soon, and threshed aw^ay. 
When I got my line fixed I murmured, " but deliver us 
from evil," and got out of the reach of that pine, when 
I labored faithfully for full fifteen minutes, till finally 
we scared up a trout about six inches long. He came 
browsing around with his head half out of water and 
an inquiring expression plainl}^ visible in his bright 
eyes, then he disappeared wiggling his tail in derision. 
We worked away in hope of bringing the scaly mon- 
ster once more to the surface. A second sight of him 
would have been comforting; but his curiosity was evi- 
dently satisfied. I asked the Doctor if this was one of 
the trout pools he had been bragging about, and he said 
it was; he had always caught trout out of that hole, 
and the stories he told me of the numbers he had lifted 
out of that place *' in the short space of an hour," 
were marvelous. While listening and trying to believe 
him I felt a sudden jerk at my rod. Up to that moment 
I had entertained no special antipathy to stop-reels. 
But with one leader unattainable in the profuse growth 
overhead, and another serving as a sort of submarine 
union-jack to an unknown denizen of the pool, with no 
prospect of satisfaction, I felt — not like Patience. 
The trout must have been a monster, of course, or he 
never would have snapped that gut with so little cere- 
mony. I shall not soon forget the sensation; it was a 
single and sudden blow without pause for a second pull, 



30 FISHERMAN^'S LUCK. 

as thougli his troutsliip in passing that way had 
snapped up that fly and gone on about his business or 
pleasure, without realizing in the remotest degree that 
he had done anything more than take a midge floating 
on the surface of his habitation. To avoid a repetition 
of the calamity, I cheerfully tied the check to a cross- 
bar of the reel, looped on another leader, and resumed, 
with an angler's vow registered in heaven, which I have 
religiously kept. 

With that commendable resignation born of experi- 
ence, I worked that pool for half an hour, gave up in 
disgust and started down stream — the Doctor followed 
in humiliation. We whipped every foot of the way 
down through the caflon to our horses, but not a fin 
rewarded our efforts. The forenoon was gone; I felt 
sorry for the Doctor; my sympathies went out to him 
as they always do for the under dog in the fight. I had 
no heart to express anything but unbounded satisfac- 
tion for the morning's enjoyment. But I believe he 
thinks to this day I was lying. 




AGAPAE. 




ID you never go fishing when a boy, and 
come home at the close 
of a Saturday without so 
much as a single chub 
dangling on a string to 
console you for the an- 
ticipated dressing because 
of your interdicted absence? I have. But the chagrin 
of the ten-year-old is nothing in comparison to the 
mortification of the middle-aged boy under similar cir- 
cumstances. However, there were no inquisitive bores 
in our camp. The Doctor was determined to again try 
his luck in Williams' Fork; nothing but the remem- 
brance of my early experience could have induced me 
to join him. 

The day after our successful failure, equipped as before, 
we took our way over the hills and through the sage 
brush, reaching our destination about nine o'clock. The 
tackle was quickly adjusted, and keeping out of the way 
of that infernal pine, I dropped a brown-bodied gray 
hackle gently upon the placid water. The fly had 
hardly touched the surface, when suddenly from out the 
depths there flashed an open-mouthed beauty, and that 
hackle disappeared as, turning head down and revealing 



32 AGAPAE. 

his glittering side, its captor plunged again into the till 
then silent pool. It made my pulse throb a little quicker, 
but I was not paying as much attention to that as to the 
trout. He made a dart up stream with the hook firmly 
fixed; I brought him gradually round and coaxed him 
to the surface to ascertain what sort of a leviathan I 
had encountered; then I got excited and felt that if I 
did not get him ashore very soon he was not my trout. 
Just below the pool, ten yards or so, was a shelving 
beach a few feet in length, and I gradually worked my 
way to it, keeping a taut line on my bonanza. While 
I was doing this I remembered having read a whole col- 
umn of imagination, written by somebody named Mur- 
ray, wherein he described his " happiness " under like 
circumstances; cracking bamhoo and spinning silk, 
with a half dozen Johns with landing nets, were the 
burden of his effusion, and he wound the matter up after 
a three hours' fight, with a trout seventeen inches long, 
when I expected to learn at least of a ten-pound salmon 
lifted out by one of the Johns above-mentioned. I 
wanted to hit the fellow with a club for making an ass 
of himself. I was hungry for trout, and inside five 
minutes I had drawn my prize up to and on that grav- 
elly beach, had him by the gills, and he was seventeen 
inches flush, big as Mr. Murray's and no fuss about it. 
Just as I got my fish secured I heard the Doctor thresh- 
ing round in the willows, about two rods away, and in 
a moment after he held up to my envious gaze more 
than a match for my capture. Our exchange of con- 
gratulations was hurried; the Doctor cast in his hopper; 
I stuck to the gray hackle, and inside half an hour I had 
landed a dozen good-sized trout, and the Doctor had 



AGAPAE. 33 

"yanked out" as many more. The pool and the Doctor 
were redeemed; we had not quite "fished it out," had 
only taken those with sharp appetites. But that kind of 
success demoralizes one for the time being, so we moved 
off down the creek, trying the eddies and below the 
riffles; now and again dropping the fly under the lee 
of the larger boulders in mid stream, with varying suc- 
cess, until we reached our horses. Our creels were 
full enough to carry with comfort and we started for 
camp, discussing the causes of the failure of the day be- 
fore, but arriving at no satisfactory solution. 

The rapidity with which news of success in trouting 
will travel through the various camps in one's vicinity 
is somewhat singular, and is only equaled by the celerity 
with which the reports of the quantity captured is mul- 
tiplied. Having more than we could consume, we gave 
some to our nearest neighbor, who came over to see our 
catch. We learned the next day that we had caught 
anywhere from twenty-five pounds to a hundred, and I 
am unable to say how many went exploring for trout on 
the day following. That some were unsuccessful I know, 
because several swore to me that there was not even a 
minnow in Williams' Fork. There was one young 
gentleman in particular who appealed to me in a tone of 
remonstrance after a day spent in unsuccessful labor 
down the Grand. He was dressed in light drab pants, 
cheviot shirt, and a broad-brimmed felt hat, the band of. 
which was stuck full of flies of all sizes and a multitude 
of colors. He had a fifty-dollar rod and a fifteen-dollar- 
reel of wonderful combination; his eyes, emphatic with 
disgust, glaring through his glasses, he avowed there 

were no fish in the Park. He held up a crimson fly that 
3 



/ 



34 AGAPAE. 

would have driven crazy any fish except a sucker, and 
would have scared a sucker if sunk to his level, and 
wanted to know of me if I didn't think it a fine fly. I 
told him I did. He said he had whipped five miles of 
water with that fly and could not get a rise. I told him 
that the trout was a queer fish, and that perhaps he had 
better try a blue flannel rag, and off<ered to give him a 
piece of my shirt, but he got mad, tore around, and 
threatened, in popular parlance, to take off' the top of 
my head. Believing this to ba a more painful operation 
than scalping, I apologized, and the difficulty was 
promptly adjusted. Then 1 gave him a gray hackle and 
told him that that was to the trout what bread was to 
civilized man, a staple article of which he seldom grew 
tired, or if he did, to try the brown hackle, which, still 
like the bread, was a wholesome change; that if he 
could get neither the gray nor the brown, then to take 
a grasshopper, pull off his legs and wings, and string it 
upon a number six Kirbj^; that such a hook would take 
a three ounce or a three pound trout with equal facility. 
The next evening I saw my new acquaintance; his 
drab pants were ruined, his rod had been shivered into 
kindling wood, his reel lay in a pool of the Grand twenty 
feet deep. He had cast that gray hackle with a brown 
body into that pool; it had been seized upon by a trout 
something "near a yardlong;" the angler had succeeded 
in landing its head upon the rocks, then his rod gave way 
and he fell on the fish, rolled into the river, lost the 
remains of his tackle and his hat with the flies, and 
some other tenderfoot who happened providentially 
that way, had pulled him out by the collar. He was 
happy, and said he would write to his mother, for which 



AGAPAE. 35 

I commended him. This morning I saw him following 
a trail down the Grand; he had provided himself with 
some hackles and had a pole cut from a plum bush. I 
predicted for him success or a watery grave. 

In tender consideration of the tyro in these waters, I 
may be permitted to make a few suggestions as to tackle, 
based upon my own experience. In the matter of lures 
the taste of the trout must be considered; as to all else 
you may consult your own. It is well to have in your 
fly-books a little of everything, but of gray and brown 
hackles, as already intimated, coachmen and professors, 
an abundance. The best reel is one that combines 
lightness and durability, and is incapable of fouling 
your line, no matter how negligent you may be; a click 
reel of hard rubber and metal, with a revolving disk, 
the handle fixed upon the outer edge, and weighing, 
with thirty j'ards of line, about five ounces, will answer 
well. For lines there is, to my mind, nothing equal to 
the braided and tapered water-proof silk (size F); being 
the best, they are the cheapest, easily managed, and less 
liable to snarl or call for a tax upon your patience. 
For a rod always select one of three joints; they hang 
more evenly and have a '' better feel." Ash butt and 
second joint, with lance wood tip; Greenheart or Betlia- 
bari; tr}- any and all; break them on the least 
provocation, which means a ten-inch trout or less, but 
wreck two or three by the " yanking process," or other- 
wise. Then, when you feel that you can handle a rod 
with the same deftness a mother her first-borji, save up 
your money and buy a first-class split bamboo. When 
you get it have faith in it, for if properly made it will 
bend, if necessity demands, till the tip touches the butt, 



36 AGAPAE. 

yet do not needlessly try tliat conclusion with it; nei- 
ther must you attempt to lift your fish out of the water 
with it. When you have fairly exhausted your trout, 
take the line in your disengaged hand; there are mo- 
ments between struggles when you can swing your 
catch safely to land, without a movement on his part; 
when he will come out as straight as the plumb line 
Amos saw. If in his straggles his troutship should 
clear the water, something I never saw a trout do, bow 
the rod to him, of course, as he returns, so that he may 
not get his unsupported weight upon the beautiful toy. 
Keep a taut line upon your prey — by this I do not 
mean that you should give him no line, but let the 
strain be steady, giving only when you must. After 
the first few rushes, you may generally with safety 
press your thumb upon the line, and let him feel the 
spring of your rod; that will kill him quickly. The 
climax in the poem of trouting is the spring of the 
split bamboo. In striking, remember you have not a 
plum bush sapling and that it is not incumbent upon 
you to bail the stream with an artificial fly; let it be 
done with a quick motion of the wrist; a motion which, 
if you should miss the game, would move your fly but 
a little way. If your catch is too large to lift out as I 
have suggested, in the absence of a landing net, you 
can generally find a place, always down stream, where 
you can safely, if you go about it gentl}^ snake him 
out, or get your finger under his gills. Much more 
might be written, and what I have said is by no means 
new, but the purpose is to put you in the way merely 
of avoiding the calamity that befell the tackle of my 
acquaintance in the drab pants. Have a taste for the 



AGAPAE. 



37 



sport, "let your own discretion be your tutor," and 
you will work out your own salvation more surely than 
by a library of directions, remembering this for an 
axiom, that: The true sportsman does not go down 
stream and afield for the mere love of killing some- 
thing. 




BLACK LAKE IS 1878. 




WO or three years since, a 
couple of divines, imbued, 
doubtless, with a spirit of 
adventure, found their way 
up one of the tributaries of 
the Blue. They discovered a 
lake nestled away in the 
grand old hills, and in about 
the last place one would 
think of looking for a lake. They called it Black Lake, 
Yery appropriately, and when they made known their 
discovery there were found some of those disagreeable 
two-legged animals who are never surprised at any- 
thing, and who knew, of course, that "the lake had 
been there all the time." The ministers, however, took 
away with them the credit of the discovery, though but 
few people manifested any interest in the matter. As 
a result of the indifference, the merits of the lake have 
been but little talked about, and when mentioned at 
all, it has been treated with a sort of indefiniteness, as a 
place that had been heard of, but was not known, ex- 
cept that it was "up there, somewhere," in the rugged 
range of the Blue. One was, and is, also, always re- 
minded by the would-be informant that " a couple of 



BLACK LAKE li^^ 1878. 39 

preachers found it," in that particular sort of tone that 
at once conveys the impression that, hecause a preacher 
was instrumental in making the discovery, it must be 
a kind of slough of despond, or an eight-b3'-ten water- 
hole, or a beaver pond, with a few decayed water-lilies 
mourning round the margin. It may be that there is 
much skepticism hereaway concerning the general 
level-headedness of gentlemen iii orders, where our 
mountain scenery is involved. Your " rugged frontiers- 
man " — to whom these grandeurs are every-day affairs, 
still new every da}^, and not the less revered — worships 
in silence, aud is apt to think your enthusiast off his 
tender feet the moment he opens his mouth. ''There 
is no use trying to do the subject justice by attempting 
to describe what you see. Just look about you, realize 
that you are not the greatest thing in creation, and, 
with a chastened spirit, go tell your friends to come and 
see and worship." So your gentlemen in flannel shirt 
and foxed breeches would recommend, and they mean 
well. But if enthusiasm is pardonable at all, it may be 
overlooked in a man fresh from his books and his 
daily, dull routine, suddenly set down in the midst of 
such evidences of God's handiwork as one finds here. 
The ordained discoverers of Black Lake did not, evi- 
dently, adopt the reticent method of expressing their 
veneration for the grand surroundings, and their delight 
at the beautiful lake so unexpectedly revealed to them. 
They were unquestionably very enthusiastic, and con- 
sequently more the object of doubt. If they had said 
simply: "We found a lake up there, just under the 
base of that cone-shaped peak," and pointed out the 
mountain, there would have been a dozen visitors to 



40 BLACK LAKE IN 1878. 

»the spot before the end of the summer. Your pioneer 
would have told it that way, and that would have been 
notoriety. As it was, Grand Lake, the Twin Lakes, 
and other known lakes in the mountains, made Black 
Lake a possibility. A few have taken the trouble to go 
iu search of it, the Doctor, who is no tenderfoot, and 
myself, a little younger, among the number. 

The trip determined upon, the next step was to make 
preparation. The experience of my indefatigable Men- 
tor enabled him to speedily devise all plans and complete 
them. A pack animal was at once forthcoming, and 
upon it were secured four days' provisions, a coffee pot, 
frying-pan, two tin cups, a pair of blankets and a 
rubber poncho; the limited number of utensils inculcat- 
ing a lesson in economy — a practical illustration of 
what we need and what we think we must possess to be 
happy. With our four days lares and penates thus se- 
cured and armed with our fishing tackle, a bright Au- 
gust morning saw us in the saddle and on the road. 

The first few miles of our route were by the Indian 
trail, already familiar as far as Williams' Fork, thence 
up the long mesa bordering that stream, toward Ute 
Mountain. Bands of antelope frequently starting up 
and scampering away refuted the insinuation of another 
young gentlemen in glasses and lavender pants who had 
been hunting up and down the high roads for a week, 
within half a mile of the Springs, and '' couldn't find 
any game in the Park." The same young gentleman 
told me that he had seen what he understood to be sage 
hens, but could not kill them with a rifle — he mult 
have something larger — and then wanted to know of 
me if there were no ''sage roosters." I told him there 



BLACK LAKE IN 1878. 41 

were, lots of 'em; that they were web-footed, had ruf- 
fles round their necks and wore lavender-colored legs at 
this season; whereat he expressed himself satisfied and 
said he would find one. I expect to see him chased into 
camp some day by a mountain woodchuck — then we'll 
have another bear story. While 1 am writing this, that 
same young man is fishing in the Grand in sight of my 
tent; he has waded out and is standing knee deep, 
whipping the stream just where a hot sulphur spring 
bubbles up throwing the steam above the surface. He, 
too, has a valuable rod. I wish he had to stay there en- 
joying his homeopathic sulphur bath till the fellow 
with the club could come along and kill him. 

Looking round after the antelope resulted in our 
losing the trail. We started in the direction to cross 
it, but, with the exasperating contrariness peculiar to 
the country, traveled parallel with it for more than a 
mile, and until we ran into a bod}' of timber which the 
Doctor knew the trail had nothing to do with. Then 
we struck off at right angles. I told the Doctor that 
he was heading for camp; he said he intended to make 
camp about six o'clock. I urged him not to be dis- 
couraged, that we might yet reach our destination, and 
that I did not like to be disappointed. But he trotted 
on, in silence, found the trail within two hundred yards 
and turned into it. By this time 1 did not know Ute 
Mountain from Gray's Peak. We jogged on to the 
timber clothing the hills on the north side of Ute Pass, 
crossed a little brook, left a blind trail to the right, re- 
crossed the brook, and in about five minutes we were 
playing circus among a lot of fallen timber, with no 



42 BLACK LAKE IN 1878. 

more sign of a trail in sight than there was a prospect 
of our getting out of the blasted place inside a week. 
Had the devil been really a man of genius, instead of 
covering Job with boils, destroying his flocks and kill- 
ing his relatives, he would some forenoon have inveigled 
that much abused patriarch up a steep mountain side 
and deposited him in about forty acres of fallen timber. 
Then when Job's dinner-hour came round he would 
have tried to get out of that, and after about ten min- 
utes of that kind of pastime he would have begun to 
realize that old Mrs. Job would be looking for him with 
the same kind of disposition they keep dinner waiting 
for us in these days. Just then the devil would have 
gained his point. 

I ventured to ask the Doctor, while he and his horse 
were crawling through a symmetrical masterpiece of ac- 
cidental log-architecture, if he knew where the trail was. 
I was deferential, knowing the subject of trails was to 
him a delicate one. He said, of course, he knew where 
it was; on the other side of the brook. Encouraged by 
his affability, I then inquired why he had left it; he said 
there were some rough places ahead of us, and that he 
wanted to drill the horses a little before we reached them. 
Then I asked him if he didn't think we had better go 
back to the Springs and give me an opportunity to em- 
ploy a broncho breaker to drill my horse; he said if I 
did not break my dashed neck before I got out of that I 
might do so. All this time I was trying to follow him 
round, between, under and over dead trees, wondering 
what sort of battle-field was in store for me if this was 
only a parade ground. We finally, deployed by a per- 



BLACK LAKE li^ 1878. 43 

pendicular-horizontal-riglit-and-] eft-oblique, gained the 
other side of the brook and the trail. Then the Doctor 
said that we were all right, in a tone that carried convic- 
tion. 

We jogged on, up hill and down, through timbered 
land and little meadows, by the sides of deep gorges and 
under huge cliffs, now in the sunlight and again through 
such dense forests of heavy firs that night seemed to have 
set in, until we reached the summit of the Pass, and 
looked beyond upon the massive and frowning Blue 
River range, riven in mighty fissures, its sharp peaks 
kissing the azure sky, its great gorges filled with the 
eternal snows, now rosy under the rays of the setting 
sun, and over all brooding a solemn stillness that bade 
the heart bow in humility and reverential awe. In such 
a presence if a man does not realize his own utter insig- 
nificance, he is justified in believing that " all things are 
created for him," even ofiice. Toiling slowly down, we 
reached the Blue, now, however, yellow with the work 
of the gold hunter, crossed it, and made camp before 
dark. After sapper, and tired with oar day's ride, we 
spread oar blankets under the great roof fretted with 
golden fire, and slept the sleep of the weary. 

The sun was scarcely out of bed next morning be- 
fore we were astir, and on the road to Roaring Fork. 
A boistrous name, truly, and indicating nearly five miles 
of cascade. Since the discovery of the lake it is some- 
times called Black Lake Creek, but the noisy name is 
more apt. Crossing the Fork we followed up the right 
bank, without any trail, for about four miles, at which 
point we deemed it advisable to camp, picket our horses 



44 BLACK LAKE IN 1878. 

and proceed on foot. We reached the lake after a tire- 
some climb of a few hundred yards, afterwards, of 
course, discovering a much easier route from our camp, 
and over which we might have ridden the horses to our 
destination. 

The lake is about a mile by three-quarters in size, a 
narrow point jutting out at the foot giving it some- 
what the shape of a crescent. Along the margin, 
when the lake is perfectly calm, the bottom seems to 
shelve to irregular distances, when the light color of 
the crystal water suddenly changes to a hue almost 
black, at once suggestive of precipitous and tremendous 
depths, and which, no doubt, prompted the giving 
of its name. To the left, its base lapped by this gem 
of the mountains, rises a cone-shaped spur of the range 
with summit far above timber-line, and its rugged clefts 
filled with snow. In front of 5^ou the main range, 
seemingly lower only because more distant, with rocky, 
snow-crowned heads overtopping the velvety-looking firs 
that reach down to the western uiargin; and from out the 
dense foliage coming and receding upon the pure air is 
the music of falling waters. For there is hidden there 
a beautiful fall, with its source far away in front of 
you in those great snow fields; in one place having a 
perpendicular descent of fifty feet or more, and in an- 
other dashing and tumbling down its precipitous bed 
over huge boulders for hundreds of feet, like a great 
artery pouring crystal life and beauty into the little 
queen below. And on the right, yet another mighty 
mountain, with verdant base and snow-crowned head, 
sloping gradually away behind the nearer hills. It 



BLACK LAKE IN 1878. 45 

must, indeed, have been a revelation and a glad sur- 
prise to the man who first discovered it, as it was to 
us who went not to be surprised, but for another 
pleasant purpose. 

We found on the point of land and down near the 
water's edge, a shelter of canvass and pine boughs, a 
Dutch oven, tin cans empty and full, an old pair of 
boots, some fishing tackle and other evidences of man's 
presence. Besides there was a boat and a couple of 
rafts moored to the beach and a fish box anchored a 
short distance out. We contented ourselves with look- 
ing over these desecrations, which had on first view 
taken nine-tenths of the romance out of the picture, 
and walked back to camp, intent only upon the 
quantity of trout we were to take out of the prolific 
depths. 

The first hour's effort after dinner produced only dis- 
appointment. I could see nothing of the Caliban of 
the Point, and was loth to touch his property, feeling 
that most men under like surroundings are always ready 
to grant favors and equally quick to resent a liberty. 
Casting the fly from the shore resulted in only an occa- 
sional strike, while all parts of the lake were being 
aggravatingly broken into circles by the leaping trout. 
Finally I worked round the point toward the outlet, 
somewhat disgusted but determined to exhaust all my 
temptations. The first cast there, with a red-bodied 
gray hackle, brought an instant rise, and I was kept 
busy for half an hour, the fish varying but little in size, 
running from ten to twelve inches. I did not make 
slow work of my part of the business, and in less than 



46 BLACK LAKE IN 1878. 

an hour had about eight pounds o£ the little fellows in 
my creel. The Doctor had found quarters where equal 
success had attended him, so far as quantity was con- 
cerned, but as usual, he had to catch one fine fellow 
larger than any I could boast. The bright salmon color 
of the beauty flashed upon me irritatingly not five rods 
away as he was seized upon and held up exultantly by 
my companion. 

Satisfied with our afternoon's sport, we returned to 
camp with tbe prospect of a wetting from overhead. 
The clouds continued to thicken; we got supper — cof- 
fee, bread and trout. You of Denver, who get trout 
only in the market, have yet to learn the exquisite flavor 
of the fish. The first time you eat one, properly pre- 
jjared, within an hour from the time of his capture, you 
will wager on your ability to eat trout only, three times 
a day for a month; believe me, and I am no particular 
lover of fish diet either, as you may have readily 
concluded. The rain had not begun 3^et, and the Doc- 
tor, full of resources, had improvised a shelter out of the 
rubber poncho, and with our blankets spread under it, 
and a bright camp fire to take oflP the chill of the night 
air, we realized the comforts of roughing it in genuine 
style. But it did not rain, and we went to sleep; I ma- 
turing ways and means to discover the owner of the 
property on the Point. 

About noon next day I discovered my man, in buck- 
skin, and lost no time in making his acquaintance. We 
intended to start upon our return trip at four o'clock; 
as yet, that morning, I had enticed out of the lake barely 
eight trout, and had but little time left to remunerate 



BLACK LAKE li^" 1878. 4:7 

myself for a thirty-five mile ride. He said if I would 
be patient till lie got some dinner lie would take me out 
on a raft and teacli me to catch trout. I said I was will- 
ing to learn, and he asked me to dine with him, which 
I did, off bread and butter and stewed blackberries with 
lake water for grog, and I have made worse meals. Then 
we went down and got on board one of those rafts; it was 
constructed of four logs each about six inches in diam- 
eter and eight feet long, held together by cleats and 
wooden pins — a rollicking craft to put to sea in. Not- 
withstanding its questionable appearance, I took my 
seat on a soap box to which I was invited, and my cliap- 
erone seized his paddle and pushed the machine from the 
shore into deep water. I would rather it had not been 
so deep, and as I tried to see bottom and couldn't, I 
thought it would be less disagreeable to drown in ten 
feet of water than two hundred — your friends could 
find your precious remains so much easier, and would 
not be debarred the luxury of a funeral. While there 
was conviction in the assurance of the captain that '^ the 
old thing " was safe, I nevertheless handled myself gin- 
gerly. I cast my fly upon the waters with immediate 
success. The skipper, inspired by my example, dropped 
his paddle, and attempted competition. After a few 
minutes of unavailing effort, during which time I had 
all I could attend to, he looked down at me with a puz- 
zled expression in his gray eyes, and exclaimed: 

^' Why, Mister, you beat all the men to catch trout I 
ever see; what kind of fly you got? " 

I gave him the infallible gray hackle with the red 
body; he took it doubtingly, while I bore my honors 



48 BLACK LAKE IN" 1878. 

meekly. After landing half a dozen trout in quick suc- 
cession, the doubter again broke silence: 

" I say, Mister, have you got any of them flies to 
spare? " 

I told him I had, and he was happy. 

The Doctor had gone round to the inlet upon our ar- 
rival in the morning, and was apparently busy when I 
started on my voyage. We were about an hour in 
reaching him, when he informed us that he had all he 
could carry. My own creel was nearly full, and before 
we got back to our starting point it was running over, 
and I dropped the surplus in the fish-box with which 
the raft was provided, that the skipper might be helped, 
as he was fishing for market, and doing it in a legiti- 
mate way. 

I had flattered myself that in previous years, in some 
of our virgin streams, I had enjoyed the sport, but the 
hour and a half spent upon Black Lake demonstrated 
that, as to the race against time, my previous seasons 
had been failures. A man under such circumstances is 
tempted to make a "trout hog " of himself, and I told 
my new acquaintance that I'd like to stay with him a 
week. 

" Just fetch your traps right up here. Mister, I'd be 
mighty glad to have you," was his cordial response. 
But I was obliged to decline; it was too much of a good 
thing. 

That afternoon the Doctor and I again made our 
camp on the banks of the Blue. I had had three days 
of genuine enjoyment, but when I laid down that night 
the heavens were overcast. We were to experience the 



BLACK LAKE 11^ 1878. 49 

felicity of sleeping with the rain pelting on us. I wished 
for a tent, a tree, a clump of willows, but it was too late; 
we had made our bed and must lie in it; there was no 
shelter anywhere, nor even the means to erect the pon- 
cho, so we spread it on top of us. When the drops be- 
gan to fall, I pulled it over my head, and as they came 
thicker and faster, thought of " The Rain on the Roof," 
and in about half an hour felt a chill on my weather 
side, put my hand down to straighten the cover and felt 
a pool of water. It crept up that side and under me. I 
told the Doctor of my condition. He said it was noth- 
ing; that it would do me good, in fact. I told him I 
thought I'd get up. He wanted to know where I would 
go. I said I did not know. Then he advised me to go 
to sleep. I asked him if he was under water, but he said 
he was dry as a bone and warm. I offered to change 
places with him, but he said he was sleepy, and that I 
had better say my prayers and go to sleep as he was 
about to do. I thought of all I had heard of the danger 
of damp sheets, of rheumatisms, fevers — chills I had — 
colds, and other ills resulting from such exposure; then 
of the men who had slept that way and lied about the 
comfort of it; then I wished it was day, and wondered 
how many hoars I would have to lie there; then I felt 
that Coates Kinney was a fraud, and his " Rain on the 
Roof" a satire, and registered a vow that if I ever al- 
lowed m3^self to be again caught in such a d — amp fix, 
I hoped some fellow would hit me with a club; then I 
went to sleep, and awoke at sunrise. I would have had 
no reluctance in moving about had my clothes been dry, 

but the sensation to me of the clinging garments was — 
4 



50 



BLACK LAKE IK 1878. 



well, we kindled a fire; I got a cup of hot coffee under 
my waistband and felt better, and have been feeling 
better ever since. We reached the Springs about four 
o'clock, tired, of course, but with the memory of a four 
days' jaunt to look back upon that half-a-dozen rain- 
storms could not wash out. 







EGOTISM AISTD-EODS. 




,^ WRITER in The Angler, I think, 

apologized for giving his personal 

' ^ experiences, in that they savored of 



egotism. To my mind he should 
^'X not have done so. What a world 
I this would be if every man kept 
3 his personal experience to himself. 
Egotism may not perhaps be a 
cardinal virtue; but good may 
come out of Nazareth. One's personal experiences are 
more novel than romances; the egotist need not neces- 
sarily be a follower of Des Cartes. If my egotism af- 
fords a brother a few moments' pleasure, or he is in any 
way profited, then my life has not been a total failure. 
Then, again, what is the use of apologizing for an 
universal weakness. If we do not talk about ourselves, 
we are always tickled to have others talk of us, and 
many would rather be abused than not be noticed at all. 
Doubtless vanity and egotism are at the bottom of most 
of the good things of this life, just as discontent is the 
father of perfected things. 

De Quincey would make a martyr of Judas; looked 
at from the De Quincey stand-point, Judas was a broad- 
gauge man. If so eminent a scholar may make a noble- 



52 EGOTISM Aiq^D — SODS. 

man out of the King of Traitors, as we have been taught 
to regard him, certainly one, even so poor as I, may 
take up the cudgels in defense of mine own and my 
brother's folly. I flatter myself, too, that I should be 
more successful in carrying conviction than the learned 
author of "murder considered as a fine art." He com- 
bated a prejudice; I should tickle the tender side of 
nine out of ten — if the nine would only confess. 

The pronoun I is the straightest letter in the alpha- 
bet; the only one independent of curves or angles for 
support; for this reason it is entitled to every man's 
respect. 

But I do not intend to enter into a defense of egotism 
at this writing; this is only to express a willingness to 
enter the lists should occasion demand, and to admonish 
the man who would deprecate egotism that he himself 
is full of that commendable weakness. I wish to give 
my experience, a very limited one, with rods. 

An immediate change from a three pound plum bush 
pole to an esthetic split bamboo rod of a few ounces 
would drive a man crazy. It would be like putting a 
delicately turned Kirby into the hands of a pot hunter 
of the stone age. As the Kirby would compare with 
a bone sharpened at the ends, and a hole in the middle 
for the raw hide line, so the little bamboo with the plum 
bush. No doubt the prehistoric angler and his de- 
scendant of the nineteenth century would look, if they 
could, each upon the implements of the other with 
curiosity and utter lack of faith. But faith comes with 
education, and when the labor of learning is a labor of 
love, education becomes easy. 

My experience with the plum bush was not satis- 



EGOTISM AKD — KODS. 63 

factory. Early in the " sixties," depending on ox teams 
for bacon and flour, fishing rods were not counted as 
merchandise or articles of freight. Necessity therefore 
required, that, to indulge my liking, I must exert my 
skill, so that when I got back from Bear creek and my 
memorable first trouting, I made a rod; my first rod. 

A piece of pine for the butt, cedar, straight grained 
and without flaw, for the second joint. A well selected 
hickory whip handle furnished the timber for a tip. A 
jack knife, glass and sand paper served for tools; and 
excellent tools they are with patience for capital. 

I shall not say how many days I exhausted in work- 
ing up those three sticks into satisfactory shape. 

As to mounting, I had neither tools or metal, nor the 
genius of Tubal Cain, so I applied to a tinker of watches, 
made known my difficulty, and he fitted me out with 
two sets of ferrules and half a dozen guide rings for the 
modest sum of seven dollars in gold dust. 

Drug stores and whisky shops get to the frontier 
with equal facility, so there was no scarcity of oil, 
shellac and alcohol. The wrapping of the rings was 
followed by the oil and shellac, and when I strung that 
rod together, aud, in the privacy of our cabin, submitted 
it to the inspection of the madam, it was pronounced 
" just perfect." 

The verdict was no less delightful than the rod and 
the jury of one. 

During the winter that marvel of excellence and 
beauty was subjected to weekly examinations and com- 
ment. The anticipated pleasures of the coming summer, 
because we were " both going," were the prime subjects 
of evening conversations over the kitchen stove. There 



54 EGOTISM AKD — RODS. 

never had been, nor could there ever be, vouchsafed to 
any other couple the amount of enjoyment banked up 
and ready to draw upon, than was stored away during 
that memorable winter, and the rod was the pole star, 
so to speak. Everything pointed to that. But disap- 
pointments make life worth living; while they are some- 
times severe, there is yet a genuine pleasure in setting 
one's foot on their necks. 

I never flourished my master-piece of mechanical 
skill over anything save the weeds and the few strag- 
gling vegetables that decorated our back yard. The rod 
was too good to keep. I lost it early, just as the good 
children die. 

I had, and yet have, a friend, whom I'll call Sam, be- 
cause that is his name. About a month before the time 
fixed for our departure to the hills, Sam came over and 
told me I had a fishing rod, as thougii I had been the 
only man in town unacquainted with the fact. He said 
he wanted to borrow it for a few dajs^ he wanted to go 
fishing and hoped I'd accommodate him! Think of 
loaning your watch to a two-year-old for a day or so. 
He promised, of course, to bring it back in good order; 
I expected no less — than the promise, I mean, and cheer- 
fully allowed him to walk off with it. I never saw it 
again, but I am glad to say I saw Sam. He came back 
in about a week; there was nothing the matter with 
him, his bones were whole, he hadn't got drowned, nor 
been bitten by rattlesnakes, nor chased by bears, nor 
clawed by mountain lions, nor lost his scalp. The mos- 
quitoes had been a little troublesome; there was some 
comfort in that, but not enough to speak of. He had 
come over to see me, he said, about " that fishing rod." 



EGOTISM AN"D — RODS. 55 

" Yes, the fact is, I found an old friend on South 
Boulder, and he took such a fancy to that rod, that I 
could do no less than make him a present of it. It's a 
splendid rod, that's a fact, and I don't know exactly how 
I can replace it, just now; I'm sorry you're disappointed 
at my not returning it, but I don't see — " 

We were not a very ceremonious community in those 
days, though kindly disposed. At the outset I was on 
the point of telling Sam to say his shortest prayer, if 
he had more than one, but changed my mind and told 
him not to say any more about it. It was some time 
before he would be convinced that I was not mad. 

That summer I fished with a clear conscience and a 
plum bush pole and had a good time. 

By the time the season was over Sam came round 
again. He brought with him a rod; it had four joints 
and an extra tip; it was of ash and lance wood. Sam 
had sent to the states for the treasure by ox team, and 
had ordered a reel in addition. These he informally 
turned over to me, still doubtful of my condition of 
mind. I tried to make him understand that from the 
first I had felt that his love for me had prompted him 
to treat my property as his own. He finally caught the 
idea, and the first trout I caught on that rod was twenty 
inches long. 

I have the rod yet, with one of the original tips; I 
have used it every summer since; if no accident happens 
it may last forever. A few j^ears since I changed the 
reel seat, put the whole concern through a whip-wrap- 
ping machine, and think I have improved it. I have 
never weighed it, and I do not intend to say how many 
pounds of trout it has been fatal to. In accordance 



56 EGOTISM AND — RODS. 

with the frontier rule "she" has a name: "the old 
reliable." 

Since the rod has been put into shape for this sum- 
mer's trip I have been made happy — No! it's not a 
new baby, but the next thing to it — a split bamboo. I 
have it in my mind, that an old fellow capable of being 
made the recipient of a split bamboo, a genuine split 
bamboo (the donor for my guaranty), with the name of 
the maker upon it as a warrant to all the world, will be 
elevated in your estimation. I am that he. With this 
poem in my hand I yet felt as of the stone age. I have 
not been educated up to this standard. I don't know 
what to do with it. I never felt just exactly the same 
way but once before, that w^as a little short of a year 
after I was married, and I thought I had got used to 
that sensation, but when my generous friend put into 
my hands this miracle of grace and artistic skill, the old 
feeling came back, and I was "two inches taller." 
That, I believe, is the orthodox expression for such 
occasions. 

It is said that hope ends in fruition; except in the 
matter of babies and split bamboos, I believe this to be 
true. 

If you are bored with this effusion, lay it to my split 
bamboo, upon that hint I spake; for the rod, j^ou know, 
is an emblem of affliction, save in your own hand. 




TEOUBLESOME. 




ONY WELLER tells us 
of a friend he had, who, 
becoming misanthrope, 
went for revenge and 
kept a " pike," in this 
country, commonly 
called a toll-gate. The 
frequency of toll-roads 
and the rates of toll in 
Colorado would make the state a paradise for misan- 
thropes. One gate may be located every ten miles, so 
the law provides, and you are sure to find them if you 
travel ten miles on any road. Some fellow has said 
that all roads lead to Rome, but in this country all 
roads lead to turnpikes. It was a delightful conceit of 
old Tony's, but if I wanted to reach the seventh heaven 
of revenge Fd hunt out a location on any road five 
miles from a toll-gate and open a house of entertain- 
ment for man and beast. The entertainment for the 
beast would be a mere poetio license, a sort of wild 
fancy, and consist of illimitable acres of rocks and pine 
brush; a picket pin and a lariat, if the beast was to 
grow gaunt. Leave out the picket pin and the beast 
would entertain himself by running away; but it would 



58 TEOUBLESOME. 

be my custom, nevertheless, to charge fifty cents per 
head " all the same," and get it, because no one in this 
country ever thinks of disputing the landlord's de- 
mands. I'd say to you, " Thar was the pastur; you 
turned your boss in thar; ef he's strayed, that's your 
lookout, not mine; I'll claim a lien on the one that's 
left, for the feed of both." The law allows it and the 
court awards it. No use to suggest that the horse may 
not have been in the "pastur" half an hour; "the 
pastur was thar, prepared for the boss, and ef the boss 
strayed, that's your lookout, not mine.'' If you were 
reasonable I would give the remaining horse the run of 
the " pastur " and charge you for it while you hunted 
up the stray. If you'd " kick " there might be trouble, 
and trouble under the circumstances in this country 
might be serious. But the cream of the business of 
wayside entertainment would be in the cooking, and 
the results of it thrown together for the man. I'd fry 
everything; would rack my ingenuity for a method of 
frying the chicory. Two dishes for flitch and potatoes, 
rolling-prairie-dried-apple-pie and griddle cakes would 
be a red-letter day in the calendar of any tenderfoot 
who chanced my way. If a man hinted at a teaspoon 
to eat his blasted blackberries, I'd wither him with a 
glance of my frontier eye, and ask him if he thought I 
kept a Denver restaurant. Tony Weller's friend no 
doubt did the best " according to his lights," and op- 
portunities, but the capabilities of my plan, with study, 
are boundless. Imagination runs riot on the theme, 
and the only wonder to me is that some fellow, misan- 
thropically inclined, has never adopted this method of 
making his fellows happy. Perhaps there are no mis- 



TROUBLESOME. 59 

anthropes in Colorado. At least I am away from them, 
toll-roads and wayside houses; in tlie land of the 
mosquito and the trout; and the meadow larks perch 
upon my tent top and " give salutation to the morn," by 
conjugating the to them familiar Greek verb — at least 
it strikes me so. 

Mosquitoes are among the blessings of this life; they 
prepare us for the robes of immortality, by teaching us 
patience under affliction. If there is anything I love 
better than a mule, it is a mosquito. There is poetry 
in his flight and music in his song. Never having con- 
cealed my love, I think it got abroad and preceded me 
this trip. I found him and his family here, on the 
banks of the Troublesome; there is quite a number of 
him, so to speak, and he keeps one's five senses actively 
employed at once, while he inculcates prudence and 
fortitude. I met a man from the mouth of Trouble- 
some, and he told me he had seen but one mosquito, 
and "he was very wild." That is the one I have been 
looking for; I long to cultivate him, on the same prin- 
ciple that a fellow wants the girl, not the whole family. 
The Mississippi gallinipper is adolescent compared to 
the Troublesome mosquito. Yesterday I saw one stick 
his bill into a gallon jar and take a drink without any 
apparent effort. If I had anticipated the pleasure, I 
would have borrowed some foils and got up a few fenc- 
ing matches. I wouldn't under any consideration sug- 
gest broadswords or cavalry sabres, for that might prove 
dangerous. I am maturing a plan to submit to the 
Secretary of War, whereby I think the mosquitoes of 
this immediate vicinity may be advantageously organ- 



60 ^ TROUBLESOME. 

ized in a campaign against the Utes, Judiciously ma- 
neuvered, they'd exterminate the Indian. West Point 
can boast of no such natural drill-masters. Their indi- 
vidual proficiency in this regard makes me itch to pre- 
sent my project to the department at Washington. All 
they need for effective service is regimental discipline, 
and I have no doubt our representatives in Congress 
can find some of their unemployed military constitu- 
ents at the Capital who would prove excellent and will- 
ing disciplinarians. Salary, of course, would be of no 
consequence; love of country, something to do except 
turning up their toes in her service, would be ample 
pay. The more I reflect upon this project of mine, the 
better I think of its possibilities, and, but that this 
world is given to ingratitude, the debt that Belford and 
our two Senators would owe me for thus opening one 
channel for their relief would be great. I believe 
'' there's millions in it." 

But how about the trout fishing? you ask. Well, 
the trout fishing is good. I have met the usual tourist, 
with cod hooks, chalk lines and wagon poles, with an 
occasional hatful of highly colored flies; the fellow 
with the hundred dollar rig and helmet hat, apparently 
all '^fly," and I have seen them belabor the beautiful 
Grand for a mile at a stretch, my mind dwelling on 
murder. The '^ swish" of their poles through the air 
sounds like the sough of an amateur cyclone, and the 
fall of the lines upon the water as though some indig- 
nant father were having an interview in the woodshed 
with his first born, and nothing handy but a quarter 
strap. Could the fishing be otherwise than good? 



TROUBLESOME. 61 

Good for tlie fishermen because it gives them plenty of 
exercise, and as half at least of the pleasure of this life 
is made up of anticipation, these felloAvs keep thinking 
all the time that they are going to catch something, 
and they do — cold. Good for the trout because they 
are never caught, and good for the sportsman who 
knows their ways, though they be like the '' way of the 
serpent upon the rock " — past finding out. The in- 
stinct of the trout is akin to the sense of the human 
sucker, and I have sometimes wondered if they did not 
entertain a pretty fair idea of our lunatic asylums, and 
gain the impression that at certain seasons there was an 
exodus; that the inmates escaped into the wilderness 
and deployed along the mountain streams; that these 
people were the descendants of farmers and laborers 
opposed to the probable innovations of threshing ma- 
chines, and esteeming the ancient flail above all other 
methods, thus expressed their hallucination. It requires 
no stretch of the imagination to thus consider. 

There is no genuine enjoyment in the easy achieve- 
ment of any purpose; there is no bread so sweet as 
the hard-earned loaf of the man who works for it. The 
rule holds good in the school of the sportsman. The 
fellows I have been writing of, had they their wa}^ 
would become mere engines of destruction; they would 
catch, not for the pleasure of catching, but because they 
could, and a universe of trout would not satiate them. 
Sportsmen are not made of that kind of material. A 
little horse sense goes a great way in all things, front- 
ing not excepted; it is an indispensable foundation to 
success. Avarice must be ruled out; your genuine 



62 TROUBLESOME. 

angler has none of it, but will insist on his neighbor 
having at least as good as he, if not better. 

I said awhile ago that I was away from toll roads and 
wayside houses of entertainment. I'm stopping with 
a friend, a genuine angler, whom I have seen walk in 
the wake of one of those threshing machines, with a 
rod light as a buggy whip, and with a twist of the wrist 
drop a fly upon the water thirty or fifty feet away, and 
as it settled gently down, as falls the snowflake upon 
the bosom of the stream, there would come a rush and 
struggle that denoted the fishing was really good to 
him who had achieved the art of casting a fly. He is 
no seeker after distinction, and I shall not give you his 
name. He does not read Horace, nor does he under- 
stand the thirty-nine articles of the established church, 
as some of our amateur Christians do, but he knows 
how to treat his friends, which is better. I had been 
tickling my vanity with the belief that I knew some- 
thing about trout fishing, but I have found out that 
my acquirements were, by way of comparison, merely 
with the escaped' lunatics. He sends me out to "take 
the cream off" a pool, or out of it, and when I'd be 
ready to swear there was not another left, he'll make 
me bear witness to my own lack of faith by striking as 
many, if not more, than I had brought to creel. He 
thinks I'll learn to handle a fly rod after awhile, and I 
have hope; besides I am learning to cultivate all the 
virtues. Think of me with the mercury at seventy or 
more at high noon, rubber boots with tops to my hips, 
thick breeches, woolen shirts and a duck coat, my in- 
tellectual head swathed in a net and my horny hands 



TKOUBLESOME. 



63 



encased in buckskin gauntlets, a ten-ounce fly rod, and 
ten pounds of trout brought to basket at my back, per- 
spiration exuding in streams; outside that net nine thou- 
sand mosquitoes to the square inch, yet I'm happy — 
going to school, and have the best of the vermin. 




METEOEOLOGICAL. 




OT weather is pleasant to 
have — in Denver — and 
I didn't escape because of 
hot weather. But I have 
lived there a long tiriie 
and know a number of 
people, and every time I 
met a fellow on the street 
he was sure to say : " Hot, 
ain't it? " Five minutes 
after, if I met the same man, he would pull off his hat, 
mop his head with a handkerchief, and as if it had 
just occurred to him, tell me the same thing, with an 
emphatic prefix. By way of change it is interesting to 
see a couple of fellows meet on the sidewalk, shake 
hands, and hear them tell each other ''it's hot." The 
amount of information mutually imparted is gratifying, 
and makes one think, at first, that life is worth living. 
But when this delight is experienced a hundred times a 
day for a couple of weeks, one begins to sigh for the 
old stand-by: "What's new?" "Nothing." The mo- 
notony becomes exasperating, and even one not given to 
profanity stands in imminent peril of falling into the 
prevailing habit. Shakespeare, Mother Goose, or some 



METEOROLOGICAL. 65 

other mortal plethoric with wisdom, has informed us 
that evil associations corrupt good manners. I was 
being led astray; I knew it, in fact. 

The air was becoming thickly freighted with exple- 
tives; heat and profanity, as I had been taught to 
believe, before " the new version," were inseparable. 
The maternal admonition came back to me in all its 
bitter sweetness, and T had the fortitude to shun the 
temptation. In the classic language of this age, "I 
lit out'' for lighter air and a purer atmosphere; I did 
not find what I wanted until T got beyond Golden. 
When the train entered the cailon the sublime grandeur 
of — but I promised not to say anything about Clear 
Creek Canon, as that has been written about once be- 
fore. I took it all in, however, cinders included; all 
except " that mule." I have never been able to find 
" that mule." Several years since I was advised of the 
existence of " the mule," and though I firmly believed 
at the time that my informant was only trying to make 
himself agreeable, I have, upon every occasion, faithfully 
looked out from the mouth of the canon to Beaver 
Brook for the picture of that much-abused hybrid. 
The nearest approach to success in my efforts was a 
spotted cow, three years ago, browsing among the 
rocks — but she is not there now. 

At Dumont a friend of mine climbed on the train,, 
and the first thing he said to me was: "It's hot in- 
Denver." He did not speak interrogatively, but the re- 
mark was affirmative, in a tone of defiance. I asked him 
if he had ever heard of Billy the Kid. He said he had 
and that he was dead. I told hiui that was a mistake, 

" He is not dead," said I, " he's on the train with me. I 
5 



6Q METEOROLOGICAL. 

have hired him to go as far as Empire to kill the first man 
who says the word ' hot ' to me. There he sits," and I 

pointed to our very sedate fellow-townsman, Judge , 

who sat behind us deeply immersed in a formidable 
bundle of law papers. 

" The devil! " said my friend. 

" Yes, he is, and a dead shot; let me introduce you — 
come." 

" Excuse me, my wife is in the other car, just up from 
Denver, and I havn't seen her for a week. Some other 
time I'll be happy." 

I do not understand why it is that this generation is 
so given to lying. That friend of mine is not married, 
and he must know that I am aware of it; yet he slid 
out of the car with all the bustle of a conscientious man 
of family. In fact he was too anxious, except for a 
Benedict in the honey-moon. When he left I went 
over and sat down by the Judge. In the meantime the 
latter had folded up his papers and wanted to know of 
me, first thing, if I had ever read Pompelli or some 
other fellow, who had traveled in Abyssinia, where the 
mercury stood habitually at 150°, when you could find 
a shady place for the thermometer; where the natives 
cut steaks out of the live oxen, sewed up the wounds 
and cooked the meat in the sun; where these same 
natives went about naked with raw hide umbrellas, and 
each fellow carried a pair of tweezers in his pocket to pull 
the cactus thorns out of his feet. While being enter- 
tained with these veracious statements, I discovered that 
our car had suddenly become quite full, and that the 
Judge and I were objects of interest. Just then the 
engineer sounded the whistle for Empire, and I gathered 



METEOROLOGICAL. 67 

up my creel and grip-sack of commissaries, and made 
for the door. As I got off the platform I heard one 
passenger tell another that " the reward is $2,000," and 
as the train started on I noticed the Judge in animated 
conversation with a burly fellow whose prominent 
features were a heavy moustache and a square jaw. The 
Judge is a good man — physically, I mean — but I shall 
not see him again for a month, and if it comes to the 
worst, roughing it in the hills has a tendency to take off 
flesh and put on muscle. I take comfort in the reflec- 
tion. 

At Empire I found my conveyance awaiting me — 
a light wagon and a pair of playful mules; little fellows 
with coats of satin and gentle eyes. Some fellow would 
say they had " sinews of steel," but these mules were not 
built that way; they were the natural sort. I dearly 
love a mule, and were I a poet, would write a sonnet to 
a mule's eye. I admire a mule's eye; always feel inter- 
ested in that portion of his anatomy, and, as one likes 
to be in the vicinity of that which is pleasing, so I, when 
I have any business with a mule, find his head the at- 
tractive feature. These mules behaved remarkably well; 
they took us to the top of Berthond Pass in about three 
hours, and climbed over each other only twice during 
the trip. That, however, was only in playfulness; they 
pretended to be frightened, in one instance at a laborer's 
coat lying by the roadside, and in the other at an empty 
fruit can. I thought on both occasions that the moun- 
tain side was steeper, the gulch ever so many million 
feet deeper, and the road narrower than any other place 
I had ever been in. But as the mules were only in fun, 
I did not feel scared. After the first exhibition of hi- 



68 METEOROLOGICAL. 

larity the driver told me that the last stranger who rode 
behind those mules had his neck broken by jumping out 
of the wagon. I know the driver to be an innocent 
3'oung man, unversed in the wicked ways of this world, 
and it was comforting to be in congenial company. 

On the summit Captain Graskill handed me his ther- 
mometer. I don't know w^hy he did it; I had not said 
anything about the temperature. But I saw the mer- 
cury rise in the tube the moment I touched it; I told 
him to take the blasted thing away or I would melt right 
there; with my heavy overcoat on I would have been a 
mere spot in ten minutes. He hung the agitator on the 
side of the house, and it registered 45°. I felt cool, and 
he took me to the fire. No one that I know of except 
Hamlet's father has returned to give us any authentic 
information from beyond the sea; and how it was ascer- 
tained that ''in the twinkling of an eye" we mortals 
should realize the end of our journey from this shore, I 
am not prepared to say. But I can vouch for the fact 
that it was just eight hours from Denver to happiness. 
If dissatisfied humanity demands a country better 
adapted to its wants than Colorado, it will have to die 
to find it. 

Upon a former occasion several years ago, I took upon 
myself to say publicly through the columns of a Den- 
ver daily, that I thought Coates Kinney's " Rain on the 
Roof " a satire. But the night before I had lain in a 
pool of water on the banks of the Blue with nothing 
between me and the angry heavens except my prayers 
for daylight; they, of course, were thin but earnest. 
This night, however, I had, as the preacher used to say, 
" a realizing sense " of the effect of surrounding circum- 



METEOROLOGICAL. 69 

stances, repented me of my liarsli verdict, and liope to 
be forgiven. I had supper, a not uncommon event on 
the top of the range at this particuhir point. Thanks 
to the mules (they had allowed me to walk a mile or 
more) and the light air, and wholesome food well cooked, 
and the obliging host and his wife (think of their hi 
bernating, the snow level with the ridge-pole, and never 
a soul to visit them except the mail carrier on snow- 
shoes), I had an appetite, and made good use of it, while 
the clouds gathered outside for a jubilee. After supper 
came the indispensable pipe and chat, and then to bed, 
right under the rafters, with the rain pattering on the 
shingles. 

" It seemed as if the music 

Of the birds in all the bowers, 
Had been gathered into rain-drops 
And was coming down in showers." 

There is only one line of Kinney's poem that ever 
troubled me (the foregoing is not his): 

" Then in fancy comes my motlier." 

When I was a boy I didn't fancy my mother coming 
around my bed after I had crawled into it. It meant 
something besides praj^ers for me; we had hard timber 
in the country where I was born and bred, — how pliant 
the young twigs were! Coates must have been a good 
boy, especially with such a name; I can solve the m3^s- 
tery in no other way. But all that about ''another," 

"With her eyes delicious blue," 

will do " passing well," except the color; mine were not 
blue, and she played the same game on me. 



70 METEOROLOGICAL. 

With the " patter of the soft rain overhead," 1 soon 
forofot all about the thermometer and the other misfor- 
tunes, being wrapped in — forty pounds of blankets. 

Having gone to bed, it is a very good place to stop; 
and as to the trip down to the Springs, if those mules 
give me any trouble T will let you know about it. 



MULES. 




HE morn, in russet man- 
tle clad, walks o'er the 
dew of yon high eastern 
hill." That was my 
matutinal orison as I 
tumbled out of bed at 
Graskill's. The air was 
fragrant with the per- 
fume of the pine, and 
the hardy wild flowers 
were brilliant in liquid 
Some other fellow would say that he " drank 
in the life-giving tonic;" but I don't drink, so I 
breathed it, with my head out of the garret window, 
and felt as though this world has some things to enjoy, 
and that fresh air is one of them. The blue seemed 
nearer, and as I looked over into the Park, and over the 
fir-crowned hills to the majestic piles of granite, every- 
where set off with a background of azure, I felt as 
though there was a mistake somewhere in my make-up. 
I ought to have been born with a gift to make the 
whole world feel as I did then — happy but humili- 
ated among these magnificent monuments of Divine 
greatness. I'm not a self-made man, that's the trouble; 
if I'd had the ordering of it, I'd have got up a success. 



72 MULES. 

There is nothing like success, even in a fraud, until it 
stands face to face with such evidences of the sublime 
handiwork as I looked out upon that bright morning; 
then the " uses of this life" seem '',flat, stale and un- 
profitable," as we use them. 

But I must not forget the mules. Gaskill has a 
couple of cinnamon bears, in a room at the end of the 
barn. I can't sa}^ that the Devil got into the mules, be- 
cause the Devil is now ruled out; without a hell to put 
him in, he is no longer of any earthly use. I am sorr}^ 
to lose him, because under certain circumstances I am a 
believer in intimidation; it is wholesome. I have 
known a single quiet and orderly hanging in a sum- 
mary way, to make a neighborhood that would have ter- 
rorized Satan himself, as nice and well behaved as a 
community of Quakers. I heard one of our Denver 
preachers once say — and we all loved him — that there 
was " a certain class of mortals whom it was necessary 
to take by the neck and choke before they could be 
made ready for conviction." The Devil has always 
been useful for that purpose, and I think he could be 
made available yet. 

But I started to say something concerning those 
mules. The Devil, as I have said, did not get into the 
mules, but they got scent of those bears, and I venture 
the assertion that the bears discounted the Devil in his 
palmiest efforts, as heretofore reported. To speak with- 
out exaggeration, those mules were frightened; the 
bears were in their heads, heels, hair and eyes; inside 
and out, above and below, and all around, were bears. 
To those mules, it rained bears, and the atmosphere was 
pregnant with bears about to be delivered. If those 
mules had been human I would have thouofht it the 



MULES. 73 

worst case of delirium tremens that ever racked a 
diseased imagination. As the driver expressed it : " they 
was plumb crazy." There was no crookedness about it; 
they were frightened horizontally as well as straight up 
and down, as I suppose the driver meant to be under- 
stood. It is impossible for me to tell what they did or 
attempted. They seemed capable of any extravagance 
except dying. I like to ride after mules in that condi- 
tion; there is something exhilarating in dashing down 
a mountain road with one's hair straightening out be- 
hind as though it would disappear by the roots; careen- 
ing around short curves and making lightning-like 
estimates of the thousands of feet to the bottom of the 
gulch; picking out the softest rocks upon which to fall; 
flying over boulders and becoming entangled in tree 
tops fifty feet in the air, there to remain a torn and 
wretched monument of indiscretion. It wouldn't be 
much of a monument, but enough to tell the tale. I 
thought how grand it would be, and told the driver that 
I preferred to have him pick me up whole some dis- 
tance down the road; I felt confidence in ni}^ ability to 
control my own legs; the air was just right for a brisk 
morning walk; besides, much of the pleasure of the ride 
would be denied me by reason of my not having any 
hair to speak of that might stream in the wind. I made 
these suggestions and started. I believe the driver 
thought I was afraid to ride after those mules; but that 
was a mistake. I intended to ride after them provided 
there was anything to ride in when he should catch up 
to me, if he ever did. About two miles down the range 
I sat on a log and waited for the wreck. Presently I 
heard the rumbling of the wagon; soon it came in 
sight, the driver sitting at his post singing, as well as 



74: MULES. 

the roughness of the road would permit: " I want to be 
an angel." I certainly thought he did, and asked him 
if the mules had not tried, at least, to run away, when 
they were being harnessed. 

"Oh, no; they was too bad scared. You see, when 
they get that way they want to stay right with me; a 
mule is an obstinate cuss, you know, and only runs 
away for fun." 

Just then the ears of the off mule stuck out straight 
as the prongs of a magnified clothes pin, and she began 
to dance. This time it was a ground squirrel, not much 
larger than a lead-pencil. But the brake had to come 
down before the mule did. Shortly after, the nigh 
mule weat through a like performance for a similar 
cause, and then they both waltzed to the music of the 
Frazier. I was sorry when we got as far as Cozzens', 
because there it was plain sailing, with plenty of room 
to turn round and run away in, and yet those delight- 
ful mules trotted right along twenty-two miles to the 
Springs, regardless of gophers, old clothes, tin cans and 
two badgers. If GaskilFs bears had got in the way, I 
firmly believe those mules would have trotted over 
them, or kicked them out of the road. Kick! They 
could kick in pure cussedness. "/should say so." 

A mule is a natural kicker, as a rule, but this pair had 
so improved upon nature's gift, by constant practice, 
that they had reduced the accomplishment to an exact 
science. " They can fetch anything they go for, from a 
gnat on a stall post to a self-confident hostler." " The 
nigh mule can take a fly off her right ear with her nigh 
hind foot." I can't describe how she does it, not hav- 
ing seen the feat performed, but the driver explained it 
to me so that I understood it. From my confidence in 



MULES. 75 

the veracity of the driver, but especially from my 
knowledge of the mule, I am ready to be sworn. But 
it is about time these mules were lost. 

We have the usual complement of campers and tour- 
ists in the Park this season. The former are mostly of 
our own mossbacks; but it will not do to call the ten- 
derfoot by any less dignified title than a tourist. I saw 
one of the latter start out the other morning for a day's 
sport. He had a rifle and a shot-gun, a game-bag, a 
fishing rod and creel; he remarked to me, as he climbed 
up on the ofl: side of his horse, that he was pretty well 
fixed for a day's campaign. I told him I thought he 
was, but suggested that he ought to take along a bass 
drum to beat up the game, and, do you know, the fellow 
got mad and made me apologize. If he had only kept me 
in front of his infernal arsenal, I never would have modi- 
fied my suggestion, but he threatened me over his 
shoulder, and that looked dangerous. He came back at 
night, to my surprise, but brought neither fish, flesh 
nor fowl; it is perhaps needless to say he was the only 
disappointed party in the Park. 

A strict enforcement of the game and fish law would 
be an advantage to this vicinity. The Park is easy of 
access, and when the railroads, or either of them now 
under construction, shall be completed, the Park and 
its surroundings, a very paradise for sportsmen, can be 
made the most attractive resort in the state. Why, it 
is worth a day's journey to sit where I do now, under 
the shadow of a pine whose every sigh in the cool 
breeze is freighted with fragrance, and feast on the 
massively beautiful scenery. A foreground of a mile 
or two of meadow rich in green and gold; the beetling 
lava cliff^s on the left, and the brown hills, studded with 



76 



MULES. 



great piles of granite, sloping gently clown to the 
margins of the Grand. The noble stream flecked with 
silver, rolling majestically along and keeping time to 
its own melody, while away beyond lies the range for a 
background, with Long's Peak, o'ertopped with fleecy 
clouds to serve him as a diadem, to be changed to a tur- 
ban of rainbow tints for evening dress. And the sun- 
sets that gather about the head of the rugged giant! 
You who view them from the other side should sit 
under the shadow of Mount Bross and see the cloud 
tints that crown His Majesty. Your view from the 
eastern side shows but the work of a tyro; from this 
the accomplished task of the master. If I had the gift 
I spoke of, you should see it as I do; as it is, there is 
nothing left but to come over and take it in for your- 
self. You can have a change of programme every day, 
and when you tire of the pictures, if you can, it is easy 
climbing a few hundred feet to find a dozen others just 
as grand and no twins. I suppose many a fellow has 
glanced over his shoulder up the Grand and seen a 
mountain with a notch in it, no more, not even a patch 
of color. But ten to one of these have seen something 
more and yet made a hearty meal of flitch and potatoes. 




MUSIC AI^D METEOEOLOGT. 




jTT 7ITH0UT fair success witli rod and 
! yV line, a camping trip, to some at 
' ' least, would be a failure. The 
weather giving fair promise, I 
started over the divide below the 
Springs to revisit several familiar 
pools and riffles down the Grand, 
in anticipation of a good morn- 
ing's sport. The forenoon was ex- 
pended with half a dozen trout and as many miles' 
tramp as the result. Life is not worth living without 
a disappointment now and then. I met with a decided 
failure where I had rarely had anything but success, 
and it sharpened my appetite — for dinner. 

A day or two after I was joined by my familiar and 
guide, the Doctor, who is an animated encyclopedia not 
only of the Park, but of the state, and we forthwith 
put up a job, as it were, upon the denizens of Williams' 
Fork. Nine o'clock found us on the banks of that 
beautiful stream, our horses picketed and we ready to 
meet any emergency that might arise — that's a new 
name for 'em. The Doctor started up stream and I 
took to the bed of the creek about half a mile from its 
mouth. Twenty minutes and not the sight of a fin. I 



78 MUSIC AKD METEOROLOGY. 

also began to think tliat Williams' Fork was depleted. 
Brown hackles and gray, and a half dozen other new- 
fangled varieties not named to me, had no more e£Pect 
than the wiles of a three-card-monte dealer have npon 
one who "has been there." I thought of lying down 
upon the bank and seriously playing with the garter 
snakes, but changed my mind and put on a gray hackle 
with a peacock-body. Result, a trout. I had found the 
color to tickle their fancy for the day. 

Trout and — and — women are very much alike; few 
men know much about either, unless you take their 
own words for it. Both are handsome, of course, del- 
icate in taste, fickle as to ornament, not otherwise, and 
always too confiding in that which is least to be relied 
on. I felt sorry for that trout as I slipped her into my 
creel ; they are such short-sighted fish — I'll not sa}^ 
why — but they exact the angler s care, and carry out 
the simile admirably. Had I offered that trout a worm 
for breakfast, the chances are ten to one she would 
have inquired whether I took her for a sucker. But it 
occurs to me all at once that I am on delicate ground — 
the current runs five miles an hour, the water is above 
my knees and the rocks are slippery ; to fall is easy as — 
lying; the fate of our common ancestor is a warning. 

By the time I had reached the Grand I had about 
seven pounds of fair-sized trout, besides having re- 
turned with all possible gentleness to the water a num- 
ber of small-fry. I did not consider it much of a catch, 
as upon more than one occasion over the same ground 
I had filled my fourteen-pound creel in the same time. 
The Grand looked tempting as I waded out into the 
deep, clear current at the confluence of the streams, and 



MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY. 79 

dropped the peacock as far out in the deep pool as I 
could. I took that fly out in a hurry as I saw the gap- 
ing mouth of a leviathan, to my imagination, about to 
take it off. I speedily had the fly changed to one upon 
which I could rely, and commissioned it to that pool on 
business of moment. It had no sooner touched the sur- 
face than the glistening sides of my much-coveted tri- 
umph shone in the brilliant sunlight, clear of the water, 
as he darted for the fly and — missed. I thought the fish 
a little nervous, and I sent the falsehood over into the 
pool again; as soon as it touched the tiny wavelets that 
roofed the haunt of his excellency he was again visible, 
shooting from out the depths straight to his destin}^ 
He reached it, and for a second lay poised as if in in- 
quiry, and then, realizing that he had '' struck it," dis- 
appeared as suddenly as he had come. I realized, too, 
that I had struck it. There was music in the air — the 
music of the reel — and that trout danced to the meas- 
ure with fifty feet of line before he allowed an inch of 
slack. He was nervous; there was plenty of water, a 
hundred feet at least, to the opposite bank, and miles 
up or down stream; there was no reason whatever for 
uneasiness — on the part of the fish I mean. But he 
seemed as much disturbed as ever when the slack was 
all in, and I, quietly and in as dignified but determined 
a manner as smooth stones and rubber boots would per- 
mit, backed up to the dry beach. Exhibiting the ut- 
most reluctance to being thus led by the nose, he sud- 
denly took it into his head to come voluntarily, started 
my way, but as suddenly changed his mind; the reel 
accommodated his whim and played a waltz; the old 
fellow, however, soon got giddy and asked for a rest; 



80 MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY. 

there could be no bar to so reasonable a request, para- 
doxical as it may seem; I immediately relieved liim of 
the weight of the loose silk and gave him the privilege 
of a closer inspection of the gentleman at my end of 
the line. Had any other man been in my place, I should 
have concluded that the fellow on the fly was not favor- 
ably impressed, as he started with celerity on another 
trip across the Grand. Being myself a man of benig- 
nant appearance, I concluded, of course, that he had 
become enamored of the sound of the reel and was de- 
lighted that I had taken a hand in the revelry. Human- 
ity, however, has not the monopoly on making mistakes, 
and as the reel was evidently taking a turn — this time 
at a dead march — I towed the gentleman round and 
gently drew him out on the clean gravel. He measured 
just nineteen inches; when I first saw him 1 thought he 
was " a yard long," but even with his nineteen inches 
his capacity for conferring happiness was immeasurable. 
As I relieved his mouth of the hook, the Doctor, who 
had come down to me unawares, startled me with the 
remark, " You seem to take a heap of delight in catch- 
ing a sucker." There was a maliciousness in his tone 
that led me at once to inquire what success he had met 
with; his open creel disclosed three only, that would 
not weigh half as much as my capture; they were the 
result of his morning's work. My own dignity will 
sometimes get the better of my reverence, and I read 
him a homily on envy. 

The next day the Doctor proposed a visit to Grand 
Lake. T suggested that it threatened rain, and he replied 
that he who went fishing must expect to get wet. The 
retort, I told him, was dry with age ; but the mules were 



MUSIC AKD METEOROLOGY. 81 

hitched, — they have not been lost, — and we started up 
the Grand Valley in the sunshine, but had not been 
loug on the road before it began to rain. Rain is a good 
thing in the mountains; it freshens up the earth, 
brightens the wild flowers, fills the air with a new fra- 
grance, makes the grass grow, and I like it. I told the 
Doctor how much I enjoyed it coming down in vast 
sheets, but he did not say anything, only smiled. Fve 
seen that smile before; in a fighting man it is dangerous. 
I didn't say anything more about the rain, but tried to 
impress him with my knowledge of locations for dairy 
farms, and the excellence of the neighborhood for the 
growth of turnips and potatoes for winter food, without 
irrigation. Toward noon we came to a stream, and he 
told me it was North Fork ; it rained at North Fork. 
1 asked him where the other prongs were. He said there 
was but one other, ''up yonder." I told him the style 
of fork was long out of date. He stopped the mules. 
I noticed that smile again, and immediately changed the 
subject by asking him how far it was to the lake. He 
said it was about a mile in a direct line, but we did not 
go that route. About an hour afterwards I asked again 
how far it was, and he said it was half a mile in a direct 
line. I was about to inquire why he didn't take the 
"direct line," but changed my mind, and reflected upon 
the uncertainty of distances in this light air, and the 
gratifying exactness of the information one derives from 
being told something is " up yonder." It rained. Some- 
time during the afternoon we came to what appeared to 
me a long line of embankment of gravel and boulders 
that might have been thrown up b}^ the Titans for a 
railroad bed in the long ago. We had passed a number 



82 MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY. 

of railroad grade stakes, and I inquired if the embank- 
ment was the road-bed of the Denver, Utah and Pacific. 
He said it was a moraine. I thought he was joking, but 
he always laughs when he gets off a good thing, and he 
looked as sober as a hired mute at a pauper funeral. I 
meekly suggested that we had already had more rain 
than — . He stopped me and the mules right there; said 
the lake was just over that bank, and had no bottom; 
that I deserved to be drowned, and wanted to know my 
weight. I told him that under ordinary circumstances 
not very heavy, too light to sink, at least, but when wet 
I swelled. He concluded to go on. It rained, and after 
awhile we reached the town of Grand Lake. It is hid 
from the lake, and I was thankful; for I could climb 
over the moraine — what a handy word for such 
weather — and look out upon a beautiful sheet of water 
nearly three miles long by half that in width, guarded 
at the east and south by mighty hills, while to the 
southwest I could have recognized Powell Mountain, 
the grand, with lower hills for distant foreground, and 
forget the two saloons, the saw mill, tavern and a few 
slab shanties that were hidden from view — by the mo- 
raine — while the clouds hid everything else; and it 
rained. 

We crossed the north inlet and pitched our tent, at 
the recommendation of a friend, in the midst of a grove 
of young pines, where the ground was soft with the 
dead needles from the protecting branches. The 
couch was delightfully tempting, on the very mar- 
gin of the lake, with the gentle murmur of the 
miniature breakers to lull us to sleep. But it 
rained; I think, however, I have mentioned that fact; 



MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY. 83 

there was another drawback, or rather a number of 
them — ticks. The next morning another friend ex- 
hibited to our wondering gaze about two quarts of fish, 
something less than a hundred to the quart, and said he 
caught 'em with grasshoppers. I asked him if the 
grasshoppers were small. He said they were ordinary 
grasshoppers. Then I asked him if he had to rip any 
of them open, and he wanted to know for what, and I 
said to take the fish out of them, of course. He was a 
polite friend, and he laughed, but I know him for a 
mimic. He said the fishing was splendid, and I did not 
tell him of my nineteen-inch prize, lest he might for 
the first time doubt my veracity. 

After breakfast, it looked as though we might have 
some '' falling weather," and, while I am partial to a lit- 
tle rain after a very long dry spell, I suggested to the 
Doctor that, considering we had to do some fording, we 
had better get to the Springs while we might. He went 
right off and hitched up those mules; never said a word; 
didn't even ask me to help him. He wanted me to 
carry awa}^ a pleasant remembrance of the lake, so he 
drove round to the south side. Then it began to rain. 
It is raining yet, and, to all appearances, is settled 
weather. 

I have been sitting under my canvas roof this blessed 
day, looking at the rain and watching the nieanderings 
of the tiny rivulets outside, and the midges that congre- 
gate about their margins. They stand on the current 
and ride off, and I sometimes think they come back 
again to ''keep the mill going," as you and I did on the 
ice when we were younger boys than- now. The ground 
squirrels and chipmunks come out of their holes to pay 



84 MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY. 

me brief visits and then scud back. The little chips 
are cunning chaps, their motions are agile, their eyes 
are bright, and the glistening rain drops that soak all 
else, leave no impression upon their glossy fur. They 
run up the stalks of the wild rye, nibble off a head and 
drop to the ground as quickly as falls the severed top, 
and then to shelter under the lee of a log or a projecting 
rock, to feast. One other visitor I have had to-day — 
a solitary blackbird with feathers awry and tail be- 
draggled. He had a melancholy look in his white eyes 
as he cocked his head despondingly, and his forlorn 
condition made me think he might be, in miniature, the 
larcenous and unfortunate jackdaw of Rheims, suffering 
under the Cardinal's curse. His wretched condition 
was contagious, and I myself was about to request him 
to "move on," when one of his brethren, dressed in 
blue and sable, a policeman, evidently, in their commu- 
nity, ran him in, or oflP. For aught I know he may be 
now before His Honor on the general charge of va- 
grancy, with a prospect of a fine and costs, or in default 
of means, with a term in the blackbird jail staring him 
in the face. 

I want to go home. The Grand is brown, Williams' 
Fork is gold color; the Troublesome is so thick that 
you can stick a knife into it, turn it round and see the 
hole. Trout fishing this side Egeria Park is not to be 
thought of, for it seems to have been raining as it never 
rained before. As if 'twould keep on raining, evermore. 



PHILOSOPHY. 




PON the contingency of a 
rainy day it is always pleas- 
ant to have something to 
read in the mountains. A 
friend of mine gave me a 
l^amphlet written by one 
Herbert Spencer, entitled 
" Education." A level-head- 
ed appreciative friend who 
understands one's needs, is a 
good thing to have. Education was my necessity. 
After being educated I became hungry for more. My 
friend had said there were " some good things in Her- 
bert; that he was a philosopher, but given to infidelity." 
I discovered that Herbert had written a library ; I had, 
then, so to speak, the wide world from which to choose. 
I am a seeker after happinesss, so I selected " Social 
Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happi- 
ness." If there is any one thing that I enjoy more 
than another, it is happiness. Having secured the key 
to the '' Essential Conditions," I felt as I imagine a 
hungry and ragged prospector feels when the assayer 
tells him he has " struck it," and drew heavy drafts on 
the future, just as any prospector does. The " Essential 



86 PHILOSOPHY. 

Conditions " being philosophy, is not dry reading as you 
may imagine, that is on a rainy day in camp. It is 
good as a comedy. 

Dickens tells us that the editor of the Etanswille 
Gazette employed a savan to write an article on Chinese 
Metaphysics, and that the learned gentleman did it after 
this fashion: He consulted the Encyclopedia Britanuica, 
first under the title " Chinese," and second under the 
title " Metaphysics,'' and combined his information. 
The editor gravely informed Mr. Pickwick that the 
essay caused a sensation, as no doubt it did, and Her 
Majesty's minions were put on the lookout for an 
escaped lunatic. Sometimes, while studying the " Con- 
ditions" — you study and do not read philosophy — I 
thought Herbert, when he labored on the " Conditions," 
must have been a very old man, in his second childhood, 
for instance, and troubled with dyspepsia. Sometimes 
that he must have been young, very young, staggering 
under a heterogeneous load of information that had got 
the better of his mental calibre; that his mind, so to 
speak, was in the condition of a few acres of under- 
growth just after a hurricane — demoralized, as it were. 
Sometimes — when his arguments reminded me of a 
horde of inebriated aborigines, each ready to kill his 
neighbor — that he must have been in good condition, 
with a view to sensation and ducats, and that if his 
theories, conceding he had any, could, by any conceiv- 
able method be put into practice, it would be when 
"chaos was come again," but that his Christian readers 
wouldn't see the joke, would take him to be serious, and 
advertise him with abuse. 

" There are some good things in Herbert," of course; 



PHILOSOPHY. 87 

I enjoyed them; unless a thing is good you cannot en- 
joy it; the only one to doubt this would be Herbert. 
He himself is an argument against total depravity, yet 
if you can find that he admits the contrary as to all 
humanity, except Herbert, call me Ananias, and his 
wife too. 

What has Herbert Spencer got to do with Middle 
Park and trout fishing? jon inquire. Not anything, 
except that he says no fellow has a right to own a 
mine; that if he — the fellow, I mean — finds a good 
mine, it belongs to everybody, and he must ask every- 
body's permission to work it and convert the proceeds 
to his own use. I wish I were everybody, or " Society," 
as Herbert calls it, I'd go right over to Leadville or 
Rabbit Ear Range and assert my rights. Being every- 
body, nobody else would be around to say anything, ex- 
cept the fellow who had the mine. If he undertook to 
draw his gun, I'd stand up in front of him and argue 
the point, while I went round behind him and took 
away his six-shooter. Being everybody, this would be 
easy to do. Then Fd let the fellow go find another 
mine, and everybody would go and tell him he was a 
claim-jumper and "must light out;" and I'd keep on 
until I had corraled all the good mines in the state. 
Then I'd go down to New York and interview Mr. 
Vanderbilt and other millionaires, and convince them 
that they entertained a mistaken notion as to the owner- 
ship of the many odd millions of government securities 
and sundry monej^s and valuables, real and personal, 
said to be in their names. When I'd got all that, I'd 
buy — no, I wouldn't — I'd take possession of New 



88 PHILOSOPHY. 

York; after that I should be capable of anything — 
except managing Mr. Conkling. 

But I hear you inquire again: What has all this to 
do with Middle Park and trout fishing? Not any- 
thing. But that I am puzzled to know, under the cir- 
cumstances, what I am to do with the gentleman last 
above named. If Herbert were only here he could, 
perhaps, help me out of my dilemma; he can set up a 
dilemma and help himself out of it as easy as — falling 
off a precipice, and there is nothing hard about that 
till vou o-et to the bottom. It must be because his 
dilemmas are all imaginary, or that mine is not a di- 
lemma. Let us see what he says of one of his: "Of 
this (dilemma) nothing can be said, save that it seems 
in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect 
law recognize an imperfect state, and in part to that 
defect in our powers of expression. As matters stand, 
however, we must deal with it as best we may." See 
how he has helped himself out of that! There is a 
world of wisdom in it all, especially the last sentence, I 
know, if I could only find it. But that's the trouble 
with Herbert — You ask him for bread and he gives 
you a stone. I know I can do as best I may, but I 
want to know what to do with Conkling; I cannot go 
on and perfect my monopoly according to Herbert's 
philosophy without disposing of Roscoe. This planet 
is not big enough for both. I am in possession of all 
worth having. It is well demonstrated that two bodies 
cannot occupy the same space. He is too old to edu- 
cate. I am, as Herbert's disciple, opposed to coercion. 
Everybody, that's me, is entitled to his own free will, 



PHILOSOPHY. 89 

but here I can't have mine. He says that nothing can 
be said, and j-et all the newspapers of the country, for 
three or four months, have been saying a great deal. 
Then he tells me of the difficulty of making the perfect 
law — that's me, again — recognize the imperfect state — 
that's Roscoe. But the latter makes me recognize him. 
What use is there in telling me I may deal with him as 
best I may? I didn't need a philosopher to tell me 
that. I want that impossible possibility of Herbert's — 
a perfect law. I am in some degree mercenary; every- 
body is. If I had that law it would be a curiosity, 
valuable as some of the mines voluntarily surrendered, 
as already stated, and particularly valuable at this crisis. 
I want to know how to dispose of Conkling. 

You ask me again: What has this to do with trout 
fishing and Middle Park? and what good is it? Noth- 
ing, except it is some of Herbert's philosophy consid- 
ered in a light atmosphere; where the air is tliin, and 
you can see a great way, it is easier discovering obscure 
objects in the distance. Herbert could not have ex- 
pressed himself more clearly. 

Well, all right; I'll stop right here. But I would 
like to say just a word about Herbert's style. I like 
his style — when I can uuderstand what it is. His ar- 
guments are something between black-letter Norman- 
French and a fashionable bonnet. The one is 
incomprehensible to the ordinary mind, and the other 
is a delightful combination of vagaries. Good-bye, 
Herbert. I hope you will have a good time. But if 
you don't find it harder work traveling over your own 
turnpike with the load you have on than driving a jack 
train over a blind trail, you can set me down for a fool 



90 PHILOSOPHY. 

or a philosopher — the difference is so slight that one 
may be happy as either. 

The conditions essential to happiness are three, and 
may be described thus: Two primary, and one primary 
and secondary, or primary or secondary, depending alto- 
gether upon the existence of the two primary. Thus: 
the first condition essential to happiness is — that 
is human happiness; " 1 do not wish to be misunder- 
stood," nor have the happiness of which I am now 
writing "confounded (nonsense! No, sir) with some 
other" happiness — an appetite; this is the first pri- 
mary. (No, sir! I am not a ward politician.) Let me 
repeat: the first condition essential to happiness is an 
appetite. The second primary condition essential is a 
good digestion. Dependent upon these two is the third 
condition essential, which may be called something to 
eat. Thus, if the appetite and digestion are good, the 
third — something to eat — becomes an essential condi- 
tion and primary. If the appetite and digestion, or 
either, is impaired, the third essential condition becomes 
secondary or useless, so to speak. These, the essential 
couditions, concurring in one man, he is capable of hap- 
piness, mental and physical, otherwise not. Observe, I 
do not affirm he will be or is happy, but that he is ca- 
pable, merely, of happiness. The conditions essential 
must concur, however, and in one man. This is a ne- 
cessity more than a condition, and may be called properly 
a concurrent necessity, rather than a condition essen- 
tial. But the appetite requires food. I mean by this 
that the appetite of the man — and the term is used in 
a generic sense and includes women — the most super- 
ficial thinker will concede without argument that there 



PHILOSOPHY. 91 

must be a man to have the appetite; the man, therefore, 
will he understood, thus: The appetite of the man re- 
quires food. If he have the appetite and not the food, 
the conditions are non-concurrent. If he have the 
food and not the appetite, there is a similar, but not 
exactly parallel, non-concurrence. If he have the appe- 
tite and the food and the dyspepsia, which is the corol- 
lary of indigestion, and the opposite of good digestion, 
or equivalent to no digestion at all, there is a lack of 
the conditions essential. It would seem, therefore, that 
there are only three conditions essential, but those three 
must necessarily concur in one man before he can be 
happy. 

I like positive people with positive opinions, not 
people who are perpetually preferring exceptions. 
Now I have one of those non-committal mortals, who is 
willing to admit that my conclusion is correct, indis- 
putable in fact, except that I have not taken into con- 
sideration the possible non-concurrence of the conditions 
essential in the event that the food, admitted, has not 
been properly prepared. While I am free to admit that 
I have not as yet discovered anything esthetic about the 
mere operation of eating, and, further, that it is purely 
an animal necessity, yet I must contend that the prep- 
aration of the food is so far secondary as to be a condi- 
tion non-essential, as I will now proceed to . 

Well, just as you say; Fm never disposed to bore one 
if I can help it, though you might have so augured in 
the premises, after reading the title. Do not swear. I 
give Herbert up with regret; the sun has come out 
after the rain, and it is delightful outside this canvas 



92 



PHILOSOPHY. 



house of mine. The air is fresh with the new damp- 
ness, and the rain-drops will not linger long in the shirt 
fronts of the mountain daisies. What could I have 
done this afternoon if not for Herbert? 




AN IDLE MOENING AT GEAND 

LAKE. 




ROM under the shelter of a 
friendly pine I look out upon a 
long stretch of water, two miles 
and more, to a sloping beach of 
a few yards in width, and then 
a belt of young trees growing 
back to a rugged mountain 
gorge. The bright green of the 
new growth contrasts with the 
time-stained hues of the great 
piles of rock, and these grow 
more wild as the eye follows up the defile. Then a 
white patch, the length of a man's arm and the breadth 
of a hand, glistens in the rays of the morning sun, here 
inaudible, but there a roaring waterfall a hundred feet 
high. 

The gorge widens and drifts away to the right and 
left, but reaching high, with irregular outlines traced 
against the blue sky; the tints of brown and gray and 
green intermingle in bountiful confusion, but never 
wearisome; then, seemingly, blocking up the gorge in 
huge and awe-inspiring massiveness, a dome-shaped 
mountain, with miles of base and height far reaching 
above the growth of vegetation; just below its summit 



94: A]Sr IDLE MORKII^G AT GRAKD LAKE. 

a bed of snow, shaped like a dove, defying the hot rays 
of an August sun, sparkles like a jewel on the mount- 
ain's brow. Silent and grand, it o'ertops the beautiful 
lake, mirrors its rugged outlines upon the calm surface, 
and faintly tints the clear waters with the colors of its 
robes. To the right and left the nearer and lower-lying 
pine-covered hills reach round and down to the water's 
edge. 

And the lake, a gem in the mountain fastness, how 
calm it is! There is no melody in the pines this morn- 
ing, their sighing is hushed, and the lake is still, its 
smooth surface only dotted here and there with the 
widening rings made by the leaping trout. How deep 
it is no man knows; how cruel it has been is the subject 
of many a story within the experience of the whiter 
about its shores, and legends not a few among the ^ed 
men. Seductive it is in its silent beauty, and treacher- 
ous as grand. Cold and relentless as fate, "it never sur- 
renders its dead." The Ute cannot be induced to 
approach it, and mentions its name with a shudde^', 
^hile ye gentle angler commits his frail bark to its 
bosom with commendable prudence. There is no tell- 
ing when a storm may come; the clouds are not always 
the harbingers of a gale; it may come when the sky is 
clearest, and the awkward skiffs that prevail hereabout 
are not the safest, even under skilful hands. 

But, as the sun puts behind him the early morning 
hours, the dark tints of the smooth waters change, and 
a mile or more away a ray of silver flashes across the 
lake; its outer line moves my way, and as the tiny 
waves reach my shore, the breeze that moved them 
brings the sound of the waterfall. I listen to the mel- 
ody it sings, always mellowed in its highest notes by the 



AN" IDLE MOKNING AT GRAi^D LAKE. 95 

distance, and then dying gradually away as if sighing 
the requiem of the lost lying buried here, or as fade the 
last moments of a weird dream. 

And, w^iile am dreaming, a friend of mine, to whom 
this ripple is a never-failing sign, pulls out into the 
lake. I mark the long, steady stroke, and wonder how 
it is that one so long out of practice can feather his oars 
so well, when he catches sight of me, idling away the 
time, and stops. But I wave him on, and watch him as 
he makes for a point on the western shore that we both 
know; where the light tint of the water changes sud- 
denly to a line almost black; where the depth on one 
side the boat is six feet and on the other may be six 
hundred; where the trout are large, and where we have 
had many a good fight. In a few minutes he has busi- 
ness on his hands. I can see his rod, against the dark 
background of the adjacent pines, bend and spring back, 
and bend again, and then the flash of silvery spray as 
the stricken trout breaks the surface in his vain efi'ort 
to free his mouth from the cruel barb. But a few mo- 
ments, and the mastery is awarded to human skill, and 
I see my friend hold up his capture for my delectation. 
In his enthusiasm he does not stop to consider that I 
have to take a great deal for granted, that I can at best 
see only a minute something glisten in his grasp; but 
he takes off his hat, waives it over his head, and I con- 
clude he has a pounder at least. It turned out to be a 
little short of double that. 

As I lazily wave a response of appreciation my boot- 
heel comes in contact with a small stone. Something 
in its shape leads me to pick it up; I find it scarred, and 
know enough to understand that it is a scratched stone 
from the till. And so my eyes wander from this prod- 



96 AN IDLE MOKNING AT GRAND LAKE. 

uct of nature's great lapidary over to the waterfall and 
the mountain gorge, which had been his workshop, how 
many thousand years ago, who can tell? The beauti- 
ful waterfall is all that remains of him, but his handi- 
work is abundant. 

Stretching along the east shore lies a great lateral 
moraine, even now twenty, and, in places, thirty feet 
high, made of great rocks, thousands of tons in weight, 
down to mere grains of sand. How many generations 
of pines have found precarious foothold there and died, 
may be conjectured only. But a new growth is spring- 
ing up, as if it were the pleasure of the present to keep 
green the grand monument of the dead glacier. 

On the narrow beach, with its background of new 
growth, smolder the dying embers of a camp-fire. My 
eyes follow the thin column of blue smoke that rises 
and wreathes itself among the tree-tops, and floats 
away to where desecration has stepped in. The sug- 
gestion oi primitive life is dispelled by the ridge pole 
of a mean house obtruding itself above a depression in 
the moraine, and I know that this is but the best of a 
number of slab shanties. They are hidden from my 
sight, but I recognize them as one does a boil. 

The first step into the wilderness of life is filled with 
bright anticipations, and lack of restraint makes one's 
happiness as limitless as the great unknown into which 
one is traveling; the second step is monotonous, and 
one sighs for the promises of the end. The camp-fire, 
emblematical of the first step, is passing away; the 
slab shanty, the sordid, hard existence that makes life 
a burden, is the second step, and one longs for the 
third, that may, if nature must feel the weight of our 
sacrilegious hands, give us the ashler, graceful roofs, 



AN- IDLE MOR^-IITG AT GRAN"D LAKE. 9? 

broad i3orclies, and tlie comforts of a new life. Pio- 
neers are lauded for " subduing the wilderness," but de- 
liver me from witnessing tlie progress of subjugation. 
I want to be the first, or, that being impossible, the 
next best thing to do is to wait till the ruin is com- 
plete. One can then imagine what the surroundings 
were; but in the middle period no room is left for im- 
agination, — one can neither wonder what it was or will 
be, and the only thing left is to " unpack my heart with 
words, and fall a cursing like a very drab." 

While my mental anathemas and I are holding high 
carnival, I am conscious of the presence of something 
besides the figures of my imagination. Looking around, 
I discover a dark-complexioned woman, with hair black 
as night, when cats most do congregate; eyes like jet, 
square face, all one color — parchment; a mouth that 
shuts like a steel-trap. Her hair brushed smoothly back, 
and gathered behind in a great coil, is beautiful; that is 
all the beauty I see, except, perhaps, a dainty buttoned 
boot with a high instep. In one hand she holds the 
end of a small chain, at the other end of which is — yes, 
a monkey! This predecessor of the missing link looked 
at me in a sort of dreamily sympathetic way, and I at 
him. Our commiseration was mutual, and I felt in- 
clined to shake hands with him. His owner was a 
French woman, of course; I do not think a woman of 
any other nation, except as a matter of business, would 
go wandering round among the Rocky Mountains with 
a monkey. If she had had a hand-organ strapped to 
her back, I could have forgiven her, even if grinding 
out ''Days of Absence." About the time I had " dofPed 
my old felt," we were joined by the other member of 
7 



98 AN" IDLE MOENING AT GRAKD LAKE. 

the family; he looked like an Egyptian three thousand 
or more years old. Not understanding French, I 
stepped into my boat and joined my friend. 

I have been making an eifort to secure for you a pict- 
ure of the lake, and though the photographer has been 
about here frequently, my success has been indifPerent. 
Every view worth having is sure to have a foreground 
of one or more of the lords of creation, '' bearded like 
the pard," with an arsenal strapped around their bodies, 
and an expression beaming out from under their broad- 
brimmed hats that would drive an ordinary man clear 
into the ground in sheer humiliation. Think of these 
addle-pated asses posing for exhibition amid scenes that 
should awaken naught but wonder and admiration, 
blended with that^reverence one must feel in the pres- 
ence of the Father's works, and have charity if you can. 
The very boulders against which they lean are satires 
that will endure the tread of the centuries long after 
this world shall have forgotten that such fellows or 
their seed had ever incumbered the earth. 




''OAMPIIsrG \YITH LADIES" AND 
THE BABY. 




EFORE the little narrow gauge 
engines of the Denver, South Park 
\^ and Pacific with their trains of baby 
'^^- cars went thundering up through 
^,^ the canons, reaching out for Lead- 
ville, the fronting in the Platte 
s:*^ was prime. Following the sinu- 
-^ ous track, first on one side of the 

river, then on the other, yon can look out to the right 
and see your engine going west while your car is going 
east, then your engine starts east or north and you go 
south or west. Now you crane your neck to catch the 
top of some overhanging cliff's a- thousand feet high, and 
are suddenly jerked around a curve into a little glade of 
a dozen acres with a little brook running through it; 
then you are as quickly yanked into another canon. If 
one were drunk no doubt^the road would be straight. 
But thirty-five or forty miles from Denver the caiion 
grows familiar. Buffalo Creek comes tumbling out 
from the south, and presently the brakeman puts his 
head in at the door and shouts: "Pine Grove!" This 
is the Pine Grove known to travelers who go by rail, 
but the Pine Grove of twenty odd years ago was six 



100 "CAMPIKG WITH ladies" AKD — THE BABY. 

miles away from the river, and the railroad Pine Grove 
was Brown and Stuart's ranche, the owners of which 
drove a thrifty traffic in hay. 

In August, 1868, I made acquaintance first with the 
pools and riffles in the vicinity of the old Brown and 
Stuart's ranche. I clambered up and down the caiion 
for five or six miles east and west. The rush and the roar 
of the crystal waters made glorious music, and an hour's 
fishing would send me laden back to camp. But for all 
the grand surroundings, the fresh air, the wild flowers 
and the trout, there was weariness of heart for her and 
me who made our camp on the margin of the then 
beautiful stream. There had a little while before crept 
over our threshold a shadow we all dread, and which had 
gone out again leaving a wound that would not heal. 

But later on, when the cloud with the silver lining 
had turned a little of its brighter side our way, there 
came out to us one of your down-east girls, to whom 
the " Great American Desert " was a revelation, and 
these grand old mountains an epic. It was the season 
for camping, and she was stricken with the mania at 
once. She approached the subject tenderfootedlj^ but 
being assured that nothing was easier, nothing better 
for city folks, ecstacy was the consequence. Then 
there suddenly arose an insurmountable barrier. 

"What will you do with the Governor? " 

"Take him along, of course." 

"What! baby sleep in a tent? Be eaten by mosqui- 
toes, rained on and bitten by snakes ? " 

The prospect was appalling; but then I assured her 
that fresh air never hurt babies; that mosquitoes were 
unknown, in August, at least; that rain was such a 



^'CAMPIi^G WITH ladies" AKD — THE BABY. 101 

rarity that I was compelled to go to the creek for moist- 
ure, and as for snakes, the rattlers, at least, they never 
got beyond the foot hills; the little gart — a-hem — 
striped snakes were pleasant to have around, and were 
cleaner than flies. Besides it was confidently antici- 
pated that baby was about to distinguish himself, and 
there was no panacea so efficacious for teething babies 
as the mountain air. That settled it. 

The first thing to be looked after was the mess kit — 
known among the cow-boys as the ''chuck box." Mine 
would fit neatly into the tail end of a wagon; was 
about two feet and a half from top to bottom, and 
about twelve inches deep; had racks for cups, saucers, 
plates, knives and forks, and plenty of room for two 
weeks' supplies of flour and other necessaries. When 
we wanted to lunch it was an easy matter to drop the tail 
gate of the wagon, let down the side of the mess kit, and 
we had a good table; the whole thing was as handy as a 
pocket in a shirt, and its capacity marvelous. An ordi- 
nar}^ lumber wagon with spring seats, an A tent, 7 x 7, 
for the women folks, plenty of rubber ponchoes, a 
change of clothing, wool, of course, all round. All 
together making an abundance for comfort, and a light 
load with which the horses could trot along and not 
half try. 

About the hour that Hamlet's father was wont to 
render himself up to " sulphurous and tormenting 
flames," we were astir, and before the sun was up we 
were away. Fifteen miles to the foot hills and Turkey 
Creek caiion. Towards noon the sun beats down hotly 
on the plains, and I always make it a point to get to the 
canon by ten o'clock at the outside. And this morning 



102 "CAMPIKG WITH ladies" AND — THE BABY. 

we passed Harriman's before ten, and from our shelf 
on the mountain side we could look out east till plains 
and sky came together. 

Down below us, on the left, six or eight hundred feet, 
the little creek looked about as wide as one's finger. 
The road is fairly wide enough for the wagon, with here 
and there a "turn out," to accommodate passing teams. 
To the right a perpendicular wall running up a hundred 
feet; to the left — well, our visitor said she was tired of 
riding and would like to walk a little; the road was 
smooth as a floor, and the grade easy. I suggested that 
horses rarely cut up capers in such places, but the effect 
of a wrecked wagon and the remains of a mule lodged 
against a granite boulder half way down the mountain 
was not to be overcome by any assurance of mine; and 
walk she did; so did the baby's mother and maid, taking 
turns in carrying his majesty for a couple of miles. 
Not having any hills to climb the inconvenience is not 
so great; but, take a twenty-five pound youngster in 
your arms, at an elevation of, say nine thousand feet, 
and undertake to walk up hill; a half mile seems 
twenty, and at the end of three-quarters you want to 
lie down, wondering if your lungs are larger than the 
universe. But like everything else in this life, it be- 
comes easy when you get used to it. 

Our first objective point on this trip was Reed's Mill, 
about thirty miles from home. No trout, but wild rasp- 
berries, now in. their prime. Did you ever eat any? If 
not, the first one you put on your tongue will make you 
'' wish your throat a mile long and every inch a palate," 
with accessible untold acres of berries. There is about 
them a tenderness and luscious delicacy, a fragrance and 



"CAMPIITG WITH ladies" AND — THE BABY. 103 

even beauty, that makes a cultivated brother look and 
taste in comparison like a combination of mucilage and 
sawdust. The "Shepherd" thought when Tom Moore 
was penning his Loves of the Angels, that he '' fed upon 
calf foot jeelies, stewed prunes, the dish they ca' curry, 
and oysters." But I don't believe it. Tom was in 
America once, and I believe he strayed this way, and 
was inspired by mountain raspberries, with cream so 
thick " a spider might crawl on't." I do not believe 
Tom was so mach of an animal as Hogg, by his wit, 
would make him. 

But the fruit season is brief, and three or four days 
in the berry patch set me yearning for running waters, 
and the delicate salmon-colored fins. So we broke 
camp and turned into the road for Pine Grove and the 
Platte. By five o'clock we were fixed to stay, with 
plenty of pine knots for the camp fire and quaking asp 
to cook with, our only neighbors a couple of "English 
cousins," owners of the ranche, from whom we could 
get cream, and butter and milk, and who helped make 
our evenings "jolly." 

Everything being in trim for the proper conducting 
of household matters, I received orders to " catch a 
mess for supper." Right in front of our tent, two rods 
away, a gravelly bar reached from the bank to the 
water, and the opposite side, fifty feet about, the river 
ran deep and rapidly. I had never failed securing a 
trophy from that swirl, and I sent a gray hackle on its 
mission as near the opposite willows, and as deftly as 
my skill would permit. I "struck it rich" the first 
cast; the fraud had barely touched the water before I 
saw the jaws of a beautiful trout close upon it, and felt 



104 " CAMPING WITH LADIES " AND — THE BABY. 

his strength at the same instant. Since last summer^s 
experience I have wished more than once that I had 
been on that occasion the owner of a split bamboo. 
As it was, the sport resolved itself into a mere trial of 
strength between tackle and fish. In three seconds he 
was ignominiously snaked out on the beach, a three- 
pound trout, the largest I have ever caught, and enough 
for supper. 

The whole family had " swarmed up " the bank, as 
Dickens would say, to enjoy my discomfiture, but the 
contemplated taunts were never given breath. I stood 
in my tracks and landed three more, and, will heart 
of man believe it? they complained because the three 
last were not as large as the first. But my merit was 
established; when I came home empty handed, which 
was hard to do, any explanation of mine was " con- 
firmation, strong as proof of hoi}" writ," that the trout 
would not rise for anything. So much for reputation! 
I wonder how many fellows there are in the world who 
enjoy it who are no more deserving than 1? 

One morning I started down the stream; it was my 
birthday, and though nothing had been said about that 
momentous epoch in my history, I felt it incumbent 
upon me to achieve something out of the ordinary. I 
did. I fell off a log, head first, into a hole four feet 
deep. Cold? well, yes! I thought I had struck a mod- 
erate sized Arctic winter. But there was no one "there 
to see," and I uttered my benison on the man who in- 
vented the sun, as I crawled out to the warmth of our 
daily servant and friend. My creel was not empty and 
I saved everything, even my temper. When I got 
back to camp, she who had taken " the long path with 



"camping with ladies A-^B — THE BABY. 105 

me" suggested that I was wet, that an immediate 
change of garments was imperative. But, having an 
exasperating disposition to stubbornness, I insisted that 
every thread must dry where it was, and it did, without 
even a sneeze, to punish me for not taking a woman's 
advice. I had been there before. 

It was determined that baby and I shouhl tend camp 
for half an hour or so that afternoon, while the three 
natural guardians wandered ofiP to the adjacent hillside 
for wild flowers wherewith to deck the tea-table. This 
was no new business to us. The young man with a pil- 
low at his back, seated in the middle of a blanket rub- 
bing his face with a teaspoon; I lying prone three feet 
away with my toes beating an occasional tattoo on the 
soft sward, my chin in my hands and brier-root between 
my teeth, watching him. There was a bright light in 
his eyes, and his cheeks were rosy, soft as velvet, yet 
firm and cool. What is fliere like the touch of a baby's 
cheek pressed against your own! You must turn and 
kiss it, just as you did its mother's the first time you 
had a right to. But is there anything more ridiculous 
in life than to see a baby attempt to put a spoon into 
his mouth before he has got the knack of it ? See him 
hit himself in the eye with it, pretty much as a drunken 
man would knock a fly off his nose; smear it dow^n his 
face, with his mouth wide open and turned up like a 
young robin's, but it misses the place on the way down; 
he takes it with both chubby fists, looks at it with dig- 
nified surprise, as though for the first time aware of its 
presence, lets go one hand, whacks the spoon against 
his ear and drags it across his cheek with the same re- 
sult. But persistence is characteristic of this baby, a 



106 ''cAMPme with ladies a^d — the baby. 

quiet determination tliat has something appalling about 
it. If there were any raspberry jam on that spoon his 
face would look worse than a railroad map of the State 
of New York. Finally, and as it would seem, after all, 
more by accident than design, the spoon reaches the 
right pUice; he twists it round to the distortion of his 
rosebud mouth; then he looks at me, sees me laughing; 
the fun seems to dawn upon him; he takes the spoon 
out of his mouth, pounds the blanket with it, and smiles 
back at me, and the smile resolves itself into a well- 
defined laugh. 

The sun has just disappeared behind therange7but 
there is a mellow ray of golden light that lingers about 
the baby's head that makes me think — think of the one 
so like him, and from the base of the hill, with her hands 
full of wild flowers, the tallest of the three starts to- 
ward me, and I remember only the sunshine of the long 
path. 

But I forgot to tell you about my camp stove: it is a 
piece of sheet iron, eighteen inches square, with a hole 
in the centre, eight inches in diameter; set upon four 
stones, it makes a first-class stove. 




BOYS AE"D BUEEOS. 




ROM my outlook under the 
shade of the old pine I see a 
familiar and massive pile of 
[^granite over fourteen thou- 
sand feet high, and a bit of 
the range, with patches of 
last winter's snow glistening 
in the sunlight. The brown 
and gray of tlie lofty peaks 
are contrasted with the mist- 
covered blue of the lower mountains. Then comes the 
furthest glimpse of the beautiful river rolling out from 
the beautiful caiion of lava cliffs. Then the meadow 
for a foreground, its rich green tinted here and there 
with the gold that denotes the coming sickle time. 
Then the quiet, straggling village of log houses, with 
its tavern perched upon a hillside, and down by the 
river bank the smith's shop, where seems the only sign 
of life. The ring of the " ten-pound-ten," as it comes 
up to me clear and resonant upon the pure air, does not 
mar the harmony of the river's melody, nor taint the 
romance of the scene. But a boy, taking his afternoon 
nap astride a shingle horse on the shady side of a cabin, 
does; he is suggestive of some of the realities of life, and 



108 BOYS Ai^D BURROS. 

is recuperating for my benefit. That shingle horse is 
to him a bed of roses, and the hard log of the old cabin 
a pillow of down. He can sleep standing on his head, 
I believe; I know he can crosswise or tangled up. I 
am not near enough to see, but I know that his cheeks 
are red, his face tanned to russet, his hands dirty, his 
clothes ragged, and — his pulse regular. I know ex- 
actly what he will do when he awakes ; he'll whistle, 
whistle for me, but not for my benefit. If he'd only 
whistle Put Me in My Little Bed, Yankee Doodle, or 
other soul-moving melody, his music would not be so 
much a burden. But he cannot distinguish between 
Gray Eagle and the Doxology; he could whistle a stave 
from a barrel sooner than a bar from an opera. He 
whistles to make a noise; and, not content with ordi- 
nary methods, he sticks his fingers in his mouth, and 
awakens the echoes down the canons until you would 
think the Utes had escaped from the Reservation and 
were round hunting scalps. 

How did I come by him ? Why, through his mother, 
of course; did you ever know of a boy being round to 
make life a joy forever, without his mother being at the 
bottom of it? I had an interest in the boy; his mother 
is a near relative of mine, and hearing that T was to 
have a short vacation in the mountains, she thought it 
a splendid idea, if you know what that is, to have him 
spend his vacation with me instead of running round 
the streets. I told her I was going a great way off, into 
a rough country where the mosquito and buffalo gnat 
were rampant, to sleep upon the bare ground, to live 
upon flitch and potatoes with flap-jacks fried in grease, 
and she said that was just what he needed, fresh air and 



BOYS AKD BUKKOS. 109 

plain food. I told her that where I was going the 
boys were wicked and the men drank and swore like 
pirates, and there were no Sabbath schools; she said he 
would never be good for anything Avere he not thrown 
in the way of temptation, and as to the Sabbath school, 
I could take along a Testament and read to him; that 
would be novel to myself and amuse the boy. I told 
of high mountains and dangerous trails to be traversed, 
of deep caverns and antres vast, of swift rivers, and Utes 
whose heads were filled with vermin, " the chief end and 
market of whose time*' was to capture and torture boys. 
She said he would have something to tell about when 
he came back, and as to the vermin, I could have his 
head mowed with a clipping machine. I swore I 
wouldn't take him; but she said she knew I would, and 
was right, because I always like to, and do, have my own 
way, except — . 

Yes, he is waking up and looking round in search of 
his Barlow, perhaps. I saw him stabbing the shingle 
horse with it when he went to sleep. No, he is not 
looking for his Barlow, but another fellow of later date. 
There goes his hand to his mouth; I knew it. 

''Hello, old fellow! here I am under the old pine.'' 
" All right," came back to me, in confidence of my 
ability to take care of myself, while he had me in sight. 
" Can I come up there? " and he granted his own re- 
quest, as usual. 

"What's that thing over there?" 

"What thing, and where do you mean? " 

"Why, that thing over yonder; it looks like a man." 

"I don't see anj^thing that looks like a man." 

" Why, don't you see that thing up against that mount- 



110 BOYS AND BUEROS. 

aiii that runs down to the river? It looks like a man 
with his fist doubled up goin' to hit somebody." 

'' I see a browm patch against the mountain side sur- 
rounded by green that has something the shape of a 
man — is that what you mean?" 

"Yes, what is it?" 

" A patch of brown surrounded by grass or bushes." 

"Well, what does it mean? " 

"I don't know." 

"How did it come there? " 

" Because the grass or bushes grew around it, I sup- 
pose." 

"Well, but I mean does it mean anything? It looks 
like a big man." 

" Life is short, little boy. But if it means anything, 
it is the photograph of the presiding genius of the Hot 
Sulphur Springs." 

" What's a presiding genius? " 

" Little boy, did you say that you would like to ride 
horseback ? Yes — well go over and tell the man at the 
barn that 3^ou want the pony." 

I am a great lover of ponies, they give one a rest. In 
fact, if it were not for this particular pony, the only 
non-bucking broncho in the vicinity, I should be con- 
strained to leave. I have been anxious to go down the 
river to the house of a friend and have a week's fish- 
ing, but I dare not go away from that pony. I am 
afraid the owner of that pony is mercenary; he refuses 
to hire him for a week; I think he knows that T want 
to go fishing, and has possessed himself of the idea that 
I cannot fish without the pony. He told me only yester- 
day that he commonly fished off that pony's back; in fact 



BOYS AND BURKOS. HI 

that it was " the best way to fish anyhow." It may be 
a good method; I never tried it; the novelty of the 
thing is something of an inducement. But the man 
asks too much, I am satisfied; the pony is not worth 
more than thirty dollars, but the owner demands fifty. 
He says I can sell him again, and I have no doubt of 
that. But what can I get for him ? Well, he don't know, 
but he's sure I '' won't lose nothin';" he might take a 
notion to buy him back, at a discount, of course. I 
offer to pay him the " discount " for the pony's use, and 
also tender references as to my integrity. But he 
"don't know nothin' about references — there's the 
pony, sound in wind and liijnb, and so gentle a child 
can ride him, and the best pony to fish off'n I knows 
on; you can take him, or leave him." 

I have concluded to take him; an indifferent saddle 
and bridle, ten dollars — total, sixty dollars. The boy 
takes the outfit under his immediate supervision and 
we go down to the house of my friend. 

Here we found another boy a couple of years 
younger. I did not know of this boy save by report, 
but now I do. This last bo}^ is sedate; sometimes I 
think he is about sixty, but his father is not that old, 
and it bothers me occasionally to determine which is 
the father and which the son. They call him Judge, 
and it's worth half a dollar to hear him call me coun- 
selor — the title with which he dubbed me on our intro- 
duction. 

"Counselor, I'm glad to see you; the fishing is good; 
the mosquitoes are a little troublesome for this time of 
year; but we can give you a net, and I'll show you 
where to fish." 



112 BOYS A^NB BURROS. 

His hair is curly, and he has what the mother of the 
boy in charge of me would call a "sweet face." I was 
about to take him in my arms, but I took ofP my hat 
instead, and introduced him to my boy; they looked at 
each other, grinned and shook hands; then I knew he 
was a boy, and again wanted to take him in my arms, 
but dared not. That evening I sat on a stool mending 
a broken leader, and the Judge sat opposite in a high 
chair. 

" Counselor," said he, " you are not tying that knot 
square; that knot will slip; bring it here and let me 
tie it for you." 

I obeyed reverently; he accomplished the trick deftly 
and handed back my leader in silence. 

" Judge, can you tie a fly? " 

''Not very well; but I will some day, and then I'll 
make the trout round here think they are eating 
candy." 

"By the way. Judge, do you like candy?" 

"Yes, sir, I do." 

I was glad of that, because I'm fond of candy myself, 
though I never before took any on a camping trip. 

We have been at my friend's house nearly a week. 
I have not as yet had an opportunity to test the quali- 
ties of the pony " to fish off'n," but the boys corrobo- 
rate the stableman's assertion, and I think that unless 
I can get a good price from the man of whom I pur- 
chased him, I shall take him home with me and try 
him another season. The idea, however, is not of my 
own suggestion; my boy proposed it. Besides, some 
daj^ when the boy is at school — blessed be the school, 
the school teacher, and not the birch — his mother 



BOYS AND BURROS. 113 

might get a chance to ride. The pony could rest at 
night, of course. It would only involve a dollar a day 
and a side-saddle. Think of a pony eating himself up 
once a month ! That kind of financiering is what keeps 
me a pauper; I shall have to forego the pleasure of 
fishing " off'n that pony." 

At my friend's house our tent is pitched on the hank 
of the river. I came away from home to be out. I 
have slept in the house for so many years that it has 
ceased to he a novelty. The boy and I sleep together; 
or rather he sleeps on the same spruce boughs or hay 
that I occupy. Perhaps there is nothing in the world 
so beautiful as a sleeping child, with the rosy flush of 
health mantling brow and cheek, with, may be, a tear 
trembling on the closed lashes, the remembrance of a 
sorrow that was, but now forgotten. This has been an 
'inspiration to a multitude of poets, but the inspiration 
did not come upon them in camp, nor were the poets 
trying to snatch repose in the same bed; they were 
lookers on merely, giving the rein to their imagination. 
A poem under such circumstances would be a satire, 
certainly. 

Last night the boy went to bed early, while the pony 
sorrowfully partook of his evening meal in my friend's 
meadow. I flattered myself that a good night's rest 
was in store for me, and turned in as the moon came up 
over the range. The night was very still, and I was 
dozing off under the soothing melody of the swift flow- 
ing river on its road to the sea, when I thought I heard 
the distant lowing of a cow; that was no strange matter 
in this neighborhood. I forgot it in a moment and was 
gone, perhaps five minutes, trout fishing, or eating wild 
8 



114: BOYS AKD BUREOS. 

raspberries with cream, yellow cream, not blue, when I 
beard the cow again, tben sometliing like three hundred 
cows and as many calves, and six hundred cow-boys, all 
yelling like a band of Apaches just before day break. 
If you never heard an Apache j^ell, remember, the first 
time you do, each particular hair will stand on end — 
if you have any left. Each cow bellowed for her calf and 
each calf for its dam — how I'd like to put an "n" to 
that last word, with cow to top off with — and each par- 
ticular cow-boy yelled as though he were six, and inter- 
ested in his mission. They were trying to ford the 
stream, not a hundred yards from my head. Of course 
I was broad awake, expecting every instant that the boy 
would start up with the impression that a million Utes 
had come down for him. I opened the tent fly, and the 
moonlight streamed brightly in upon his sunburned 
face; he heaved a long sigh of utter satisfaction, turned 
over and snored an accompaniment to the pandemo- 
nium in the road. I gave it up, and prepared to turn 
in again just as the rear end of the cavalcade was pass- 
ing out of sight. 

But not to sleep, just yet. My friend has a dozen or 
more burros, and the burro is another of the blessings 
of this world for which I possess unlimited love. Their 
patient and melancholy looking eyes will excite the 
sympathy of any human save the miner; their ears are 
a mystery; their song! — Oh for a bard to string his lyre 
and sing in poetic numbers his praises of the burro's 
song! I have sometimes thought the burro the Pegasus 
of some of our Colorado poets, but that they shunned 
their source of inspiration ; gave him the cold shoulder, 
as it were. Rivalry begets jealousy, and that may ac- 



BOYS AND BURROS. 115 

count for it; each individual poet would swear by him- 
self only, upon the same principle that every fellow 
likes to take to himself the credit of all the good things 
said and done, forgetting there is' nothing new under 
the sun. 

Well, my friend's burros had ranged themselves in 
line along the inside of the lane fence, and with their 
ears sticking straight out a foot or more between the 
top rails, seemed to be silently investigating the cause 
of the misery in their vicinity. A little blue fellow at 
the head seemed to take in the situation, as the last cow- 
boy galloped by; then he stuck his head through the 
fence rails and laughed; his immediate neighbors of 
course saw the joke, and joined in. The whole band at 
once became inspired, and that infected me. When it 
grew monotonous, I began "heaving rocks;" they 
pulled their heads in at this unexpected interruption, 
backed off a few rods out of the reach of my compli- 
ments, and stared at me with their ears. After appar- 
ently taking in my situation, they began laughing 
again. I laid down in disgust, and the boy slept on. 
The moon was going down in the West before the sere- 
nade entirely ceased; then I went to sleep, and dreamed — 
no wonder, you say — that I was in Ireland. There I met 
the Doctor, driving round in an American buckboard, 
with no tires on the wheels. I asked him where the 
irons were, and he told me the English Government 
was covering the Green Isle with railroads as a military 
necessity, and was confiscating all the iron. Building 
railroads being then my mission, I had a gang of mtn 
at work, When I felt myself suddenly hit in the back 
with a spike hammer, whereat I was broad awake in the 



116 BOYS AKD BURKOS. 

tent on the bank of the river, and the boy's knees 
planted in my ribs. I shook him, gently of course, 
and asked him why he did it. He said he didn't know, 
but guessed he was asleep; that he could always do it at 
home, and strike his knees against the wall. There was 
no answer to this, so I told him to go to sleep again, 
which he did. In less than five minutes he was lying 
crosswise. I straightened him out, gently of course, and 
he wanted to know why I did that. My explanation 
being satisfactorj^, he went to sleep again, and I was 
getting into a doze when he turned a somersault and lit 
with his head in my stomach. I straightened him out 
again, gently of course, and asked him if he thought I 
was a circus ring. He said he had been dreaming. I 
told him he shouldn't dream; that dreaming was the 
peculiar privilege of his elders. I might have read him 
quite an essay on dreaming, but he was having out his 
morning nap, and I turned out quite refreshed. When 
I went to call him to breakfast, he was on his knees 
with his face buried in his hands, and his hands on his 
pillow. Of course I hesitated to disturb him in that Ori- 
ental attitude of devotion, but I soon discovered he was 
asleep, finishing that morning nap. As soon as he was 
fairly awake he beg^n to whistle. 

The boy, the pony and I went back to the stableman 
to-day, and the latter offered me thirty dollars for the 
pony, saddle and bridle. I told him I thought thirty 
dollars rather an extravagant expenditure for a week's 
use of a pony, but the man seemed to have forgotten 
that he had sold him to me. When I reminded him of 
the fact, he said he couldn't buy and sell horses with- 
out making something; that the buying and selling of 



BOYS Ai^D BURROS. 117 

liorses was his business; that he had a family to support 
and expenses to meet; but seeing as how I was anxious 
to sell, though he had no particular use for a pony, and 
as long as it was me, he'd give me thirty-two fifty for 
the outfit. I had finally learned the value of the pony, 
and being loth to impose upon him something that he 
did not need, I concluded not to sell, notwithstanding 
the side-saddle and the ability of the pony to consume 
himself monthly. The boy approved the plan — that 
is all this emergency demands. I shall yet " fish off 'n 
that pony." 

The dining-room of the caravansary where my boy 
takes me to get our daily bread is presided over by a 
goddess possessed of a pink cotton gown and a Grecian 
nose with a mole — an exquisite sorrel mole with two 
sable hairs pendant. Looked at from any point of the 
compass she resembles a shingle with an old-fashioned 
candle extinguisher for a head. The former physical pe- 
culiarity is the result, I presume, of the Mother Hub- 
bard cut of the cotton robe; the latter, of the manner in 
which she dresses her hair. While she served the fried 
liver to-day, a pensive sadness lingering about her blue 
eyes exaggerated the mole, and it seemed that both the 
mole and its owner felt they were out of place. As she 
stood over against me, with the stoneware platter of felic- 
ity gracefully poised in her nut-brown hands, hers was 
that " far-away look" we read about, and I thought, 

" The melancholy days have come. 
The saddest of the year." 

Might she not be a New England school ma'am away 
for a vacation? Or perhaps one of our own seminary 
young ladies escaped for a holiday. I had heard of such 



118 BOYS AND BUEROS. 

vasfaries in other hill countries further east, and knew 
that fashion followed the star of empire rapidly. I had 
never met any poets — might she not be one ? Her 
style of coiffure and number seven boot were suggestive 
of something out of the ordinary, to say the least. Pre- 
suming upon the far-away look and my paternal ap- 
pearance, I said: 

" My dear, can I have a glass of milk? " 

The look was not so far away any more — only about 
three feet, or less; and to me the little boy appeared 
quite as tall as I, as she answered: 

" No, sir; we buy our milk." 

T wanted to ask her if I might infer that all else in 
that hostelry was stolen, but daren't. She left me in 
this collapsed condition, and the boy then wanted to 
know of me who she was. I ventured to tell him she 
was the lost pleiad. Then he wanted to know what a 
pleiad was. When I had explained as well as my limited 
knowledge of mythology would permit, he wanted to 
know if the pleiades were in the Milky Way. In my 
then condition of mind, the inquiry from any other 
source would have proved the proverbial ''last straw." 
He pouted on my laughing at him, and threatened to 
tell the young woman that I had said her husband was 
in hell rolling stones. Only the promised deprivation of 
the pony, in such event, averted the calamity. 

Sometime during that forenoon my boy picked up a 
friend whom he brought into camp behind him on the 
pony. This other boy was dressed in the remains of a 
shirt, with some other man's pants, strapped to his arm 
pits by a relic of suspender and rolled up to his knees. 
The iris of one eye was black, the other gray; his hair 



BOYS AND BUREOS. 119 

had the withered appearance of having been cured in 
the sun; his skin russet and of grain leather texture. 
He might have been half a score or three in years; if he 
had ever possessed any timidity the sharp edges of it had 
been rubbed off years ago. Looking down at me with 
a Selkirkian satisfaction, he inquired hoarsely: 

"I say, Mister, be you this kid's dad?" 

''His mother says so, and I have no reason to 
doubt it." 

"Is she the boss?" 

" She is." 

"Thought so; does she chaw gum?" 

" No." 

" What! Don't chaw gum! What kind of a Christian 
is she, anyway? " 

"A Methodist — an orthodox." 

" Well, so's mam, and she chaws gum, you bet — see 
that" — and he held out a hand that in its normal 
state would have rivaled Vulcan's for color; but the 
combination of pitch and dirt exhibited was a marvel 
of blackness. "That's her'n." 

Thinking my turn had come, and taking advantage 
of the momentary lull, I inquired his name. 

"Tom." 

" What is your surname? " 

"My what?" 

" Your other name? " 

"Oh! Hain't got none." 

"What is your mother's name?" 

" Mam, you mean ? — Jane." 

" Well, what is her other name? " 

" Dunno." 



120 BOYS AND BUKROS. 

" What is your father's name? " 

'' Dad, you mean? — John.*" 

"Has he no other name? " 

" Not that I knows on." 

" What does your mam call him ? " 

"Don't call him at all — she blows the horn." 

Upon further questioning I learned that this scion of 
a nameless house was a nephew of the young woman 
who owned the mole. Also that he had been informed 
that I was " one of them newspaper fellers." I hast- 
ened to convince him that however much I felt honored 
I could not lay claim to the distinction. At this he 
wanted to know what I was " givin' " him. I disavowed 
any intention of giving him anything, unless, indeed, 
it might be a taste of the quirt my boy used to tickle 
the poDy's ribs. Not having an appetite for that kind 
of pabulum, he suddenly slipped off his perch and dis- 
appeared; as he did so the sulphurous fumes from the 
Springs were heavier than I had ever known them. 
My boy then had an interview with me, amicable, of 
course, during which we discussed at length the evil in- 
fluence of miscellaneous associations, the Sunday school 
mission and kindred subjects. Half an hour afterwards 
I saw them together again killing w^ater snakes. I 
went immediately and turned the pony into the pasture, 
thinking he would need at least three days' rest; it 
proved a specific. 

That day at dinner I found a glass of milk awaiting 
me, as well as the young woman, with a smile, instead 
of the excrescence, being the absorbing feature. Being 
neither Mexican nor French, the revolution was a sur- 
prise; I carried that round with me all the afternoon 



BOYS AifD BUKROS. 121 

without knowing what to do with it. Had my boy's 
mother been accessible she could have cleared up the 
surprise in five minutes. 

In the evening I sat on the tavern porch, enjoying 
my brier-root, when I became conscious of the presence 
of the cotton gown and its owner. She wanted to 
know of me if I WQre " star gazing." I began to think 
she had taken me for a widower and eligible, so I 
hastened to tell her that since my fourth marriage I 
had outgrown the sentiment involved in her inquiry. 
She nevertheless assured me that she " doted on the 
study of the heavenly orbs,'' and a minute afterwards 
I learned — "Oh, my prophetic soul" — that poetry 
was lier mission. She said she had been trying to find 
out the difference between a spondee and a trochee; I 
told her I knew nothing about the former, being a tem- 
perance man; as to the latter, I recommended Brown's, 
and offered her one, as she seemed to need it at the 
moment. But she declined, as I thought, in a manner 
unnecessarily formal. Then she informed me that she 
had no reference to bronchial difiiculties or their reme- 
dies, but to feet. I expected no less than a disserta- 
tion on corns, that being a tender subject with me, 
and Hastened to express my interest. I became con- 
vinced in a moment that I had verily " put my foot in 
it " for the second time, when she told me she meant 
" poetic feet." I was about to say something, but felt 
out of my depth, and refrained, lest I might disappear, 
head and ears. She then informed ma that a spondee 
was a foot, but whether it was a foot of two short syl- 
lables and a long one, or two long ones and a short one, 
was what '' bothered " her. I told her the subject was 



122 BOYS AND BUEROS. 

too long for me to get round, and, in short, that I had 
never read any poetry but that of Walt Whitman. 
She had never heard of him, and wanted a taste of his 
quality; I gave it her: 

*' My head slews round on my neck ; 
Music rolls, but not from the organ ; 
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine " — 

She interrupted me at this point, and wanted to know 
what I was "giving" her, and whether I called that 
poetry. It became my duty, of course, to assure her of 
my utter inability to express an opinion. Thereupon, 
in a burst of confidence, she informed me that, as I had 
no appreciation of poetic numbers (though she pos- 
sessed "piles of manuscript"), she had just finished 
"An Essay on Time." The subject being prose, and 
original, I begged the favor of hearing it. She began 
without hesitation: 

" Once more has the earth completed its circuit round 
the burning and brilliant luminary of heaven; the 
wheels of Time still roll on and bury every moment in 
the dust the wrecks of former revolutions " 

Just then my boy came with the announcement that 
he was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. It is difficult 
to resist a boy's appeal, as a rule; of the sleepy boy an 
imp'ossibility. If not yielded to at once, he repeats his 
invocation every half minute until success crowns his 
efforts. But I could not go without exacting a prom- 
ise that, at some future time, when she had time, the 
Essay on Time, " whereof by parcels I had something 
heard, but not intentively," she would " dilate " fully. 
Of course she promised, but the Arctic smile which 
beamed upon the boy would have made his mother 



BOYS AND BURROS. 



123 



wretched. The next morning at breakfast he com- 
plained to me that his coffee tasted salty. I had learned 
of him that he had already that morning corroborated to 
the aunt my denial to the nephew of the editorial dignity 
charged upon me by that youth the day before. I had 
no milk for dinner that day, nor any day thereafter; the 
far-away look cam^ back into Merope's eyes, and, for 
me, was stereotyped there. The Essay on Time was 
lost; so were I and the boy — at least we seemed to be 
the only ones aware of our own presence at meal times. 
I always have sympathy for those who realize having, as 
it were, " wasted their sweetness on the desert air." But 
the young woman ignored sympathy, and I was made 
painfully conscious of my inability to eat her pearls. 
One's pride may sometimes exert the mastery over one's 
appetite, but a boy's stomach, especially a healthy boy's, 
possesses no such armor. His tyrant began to dictate 
to him, and, as tyranny generally begets rebellion in 
the subject, there was no alternative but to declare war 
or vacate. Being always peacefully inclined, I adopted 
the latter, and the boy, the pony and I took our leave. 




"HE^S I^O SAEDIH'E." 




AGON WHEEL GAP ought to 
have been colonized by Frenchmen. 
Why, did you say? Well, the Gap 
proper is a few hundred feet long. 
On the southwest side of the Rio 
• ^ Grande, a cliff, about six hundred 

feet at the base, reaches heavenward perpendicularly 
about the same distance. Opposite, and stretching 
for two miles or more down the stream, is a beetling 
wall, in some places, they tell me, thirteen hundred feet 
high. To reach the summit, one must go two miles 
up the river to Bellows Creek, strike into a game trail 
that leads through numberless little parks, bordered 
with mountain pines, and gorgeous with the hues of 
wild flowers. If a Frenchman should walk to the sum- 
mit of his ambition, he would be too tired to fall off; 
if he rode up, being a mercurial creature, he'd have 
time to, and would, change his mind, go back to his 
family, if he had any, and wonder why he had ever en- 
tertained the notion that this is not a good world to 
live in. Looked at from below, there wDuld be such a 
fascination in the absolute magnificence of the means to 
his end, that when the melancholy fit enraptured him 
again, he'd go over the same trail, with the same happy 



U -„^'^ ^^^ ^ . ■^■r.-.-w-r-r, 11 



HE S KO SARDINE. 125 

result. Witli those cliffs hanging over him, the conse- 
quences of charcoal, morphine, the pistol or the rapier 
would become coarse. He would abandon all other 
routes to immortality, and finally die in his bed with 
the weight of years, like a Christian. That was my 
explanation to the Captain, and he believed in it, as we 
lay peering over the edge and looking down at our six- 
feet friends turned into midgets. 

Those friends of ours, good rodsters, all, stood on the 
bank of the river, evidently predicting what a day 
might bring forth. The Rio Grande was metamor- 
phosed from a crj^stal stream into a river of mud. 
From our dizzy height, it looked like a demoralized 
rope, the impeding boulders in the current making the 
frayed patches. We had seen it in that plight and none 
other for two weeks. But that we had been assured each 
day that there would certainly be a change on the mor- 
row, we would have sworn its normal condition was 
" rily." 

Having been lied to daily for the last fourteen days, 
our hope had ended in the faith that inspired our com- 
forters. " So much a long communion tends to make 
us what we are: — even 1'' promised each newcomer, 
anxious to test his skill, that the river would " clear up 
to-morrow." We had heard, too, about four times a 
day, of the eight-pound trout captured somewhere in 
Antelope Park, on a seven-ounce rod, — the trout I 
mean, not the park. I knew all the history of that 
trout; it had been skinned and the skin stuffed; I saw 
a woman who saw the trout, and I, of course, had no 
hesitation in confidently asserting its weight and the 
details of its capture. 



126 ''he's KO SARDIi^E." 

Our liOLirly routine had been to go to the river, ex- 
amine the color of the water, and the mark that regis- 
tered its stage; every fellow said it would " clear up 
to-morrow; " then we went back to the house and 
smoked. 

Being on higher ground, the Captain thought he 
would vary the subject, so he said: 

" I'd like to catch a pound and a half trout." 

I told him he should have one; that one of eight 
pounds had been caught somewhere in Antelope Park, 
and that it had been skinned and the skin stuffed; then 
he said he felt encouraged. That night the river did 
clear a little, and notwithstanding we knew that every 
fish in the river was gorged, we could not resist going 
down stream. Having floundered round on the slip- 
pery boulders for a couple of hours without sitting- 
down, we reached a couple of good-sized pools at the 
head of a riffle; the Captain took the upper, I the 
lower. Making my way out near to mid-stream, I 
took up my station behind a large flat rock that stood 
about a foot out of water, and busied myself sending a 
'' coachman " and a "professor" out into my domain 
with a little hope that I might induce something out 
of the inviting pool. Before I had been there five 
minutes a yell from the Captain caused me to look his 
way. His Bethabara was beautifully arched, and at the 
end of fifty feet of line something was helping itself 
to silk. 

'' I've got him — he's a whopper." 

"That's the pound and a half I promised you," I an- 
swered, as a beautiful fellow shot across stream not three 
yards above me; '' but you'll lose him in that current." 



U -nr-T^V, -..T-^ n i -r^-r^-r^^^ ■" 



HE S NO SARDmE. 127 

"I know it, unless I work him down your way." 
''Come on with him — don't mind me." I reeled in, 
climbed on the rock, and sat down to see the fun. The 
noble fish made a gallant fight, but the hook was in his 
upper jaw, and it was only a matter of time when he 
would turn upon his side. Working him down stream, 
through my pool and round into the quieter water near 
shore, was the work of ten minutes at least; the captive, 
seeming to readily understand that still water was not 
his best hold, kept making rushes for the swift current; 
but each time he was brought back, and soon began to 
weaken under the spring of the lithe toy in the Captain's 
hand. Fifteen minutes were exhausted when the scale 
hook was run under his gills, and he registered one 
pound twelve ounces. 

Apologizing for creating a row in my quarters, the 
Captain went back to his old place, while I again tried 
my luck. About five minutes elapsed when I heard 
another, not to be mistaken yell. 

" I've got another — he's bigger than the first." 
"Yes, I see you have — I think it's infernally mean." 
" I know it is, but I can't help it. Fve got to come 
down there again." 

" Well, come on," and I sat down again to watch the 
issue. The struggle was not so brave, though the fish, 
when brought to scale, weighed half a pound more than 
the first. While we were commenting on this streak of 
luck, we noticed a change in the water, its partially 
clear hue began to grow milky, and in less time than it 
takes to tell it, a boulder six inches under the surface 
was out of sight. 

"We might as well go to dinner, no trout will rise in 



U „^'^ -.^^ r. . -r.-r.T^-wT„ " 



128 " HE S ISO SARDmE. 

that mud," and I reeled up witli tlie reflection that the 
next best thing to catching a trout is to see one cap- 
tured by one who knows how to manipulate a two- 
pounder on a seven-ounce rod. 

That evening the river gave promise, as usual, of 
'^clearing up to-morrow," whereupon six of us made 
arrangements for a trip up stream half a dozen miles, 
with a lunch in the wagon. The morrow came and 
brought with it comparatively clear water. We were 
off immediately after breakfast; arrived at our lunch- 
ing place under the shelter of some pines by the river 
bank, it was at once discovered that the river had gone 
back on us, so to speak; muddy again. No one swore, 
we just arranged ourselves along the margin and prayed; 
all good anglers know how to pray. I am indifferently 
skilful — at angling I mean — but always endeavor to 
do the best I can. In the course of an hour the river 
gave us some encouragement. It grew better as noon 
approached, and after lunch each man was assigned his 
quarters and struck out for them. 

I went down stream with a six-footer in long waders, 
who was to cross to the other side at the first riffle, 
which he did. Our flies overlapped each other in agree- 
able proximity for two hours or more, with indifi'erent 
success to either. The trout were gorged with the food 
brought down by the repeated rises, and seemed in no 
hurry to seek the broad road that leads unto death. 

Finally we reached a magnificent pool, nearly a mile 
from our starting point, and my companion had worked 
his way back to my side of the stream. We started 
into the edge of the pool together, he above me a couple 
of rods. The flies went over toward the opposite bank, 



"he's no sabdin^e." 129 

twenty-five and thirty feet away, time and again, with- 
out success. Finally an exclamation from the gentle- 
man above me directed my attention from my own 
tackle to his. 

"Have you got him?" The inquiry was made on 
the score of good fellowship; the bend of his split bam- 
boo, the tension of his line, and the whirr of his reel 
indicated that my tall friend had reached the first stao-e. 

" I've hooked him, and he's no sardine, I tell you — 
whoa boy; gently now," as a sudden rush strung off 
full twenty feet of line. "Whoa boy, be easy, now; 
gently, now; come here; whoa! confound your picture ! 
whoa boy; gently; so, boy." 

Just then a call from behind us announced the arrival 
of the balance of the party. They had got out of the 
wagon and were standing along the bank. 

" May be you think you are driving a mule," came 
from one of them. 

"Oh no! I'm trying to lead one — whoa boy, whoa 
boy — gently now; none of your capers — whoa! I tell 
you!" as a renewed and vigorous dash for liberty 
threatened destruction to the slender tackle. "No you. 
don't, old fellow — so, boy; that's a good fellow," and 
showing his back near the surface the captive exhibited: 
twenty inches, at a guess, of trout. 

" By George, he's a beauty," came from behind us.. 

I had allowed my flies to float down stream and had 

backed out to give room for fair play. It was a long 

fight, but his troutship finally showed side up, and waS' 

gently drawn ashore, the water turned out of him, and 

he drew down the scale three pounds, to a notch. As 

we gathered around to admire hismajest}^ I said: " The 
9 



130 



''he's 1^0 SAEDINE." 



next best thing to catching a trout is to see a three- 
pounder brought to creel by one who can handle a 
seven-ounce rod/' They all agreed with me, and our 
tall friend modestly doffed his dead grass canvas. 




U^DEE DIFFICULTIES. 




HE clouds would assemble 
daily about the summits of 
the Sierra Mimbres, 
whence come the waters of 
the Rio Grande. Prayers 
were unavailing ; the morn- 
ing brought the usual com- 
plement of fleecy harbin- 
gers, and by noon the hosts 
were marshaled in mighty 
platoons of black and gray; 
the artillery was unlimbered, the sun retreated in dis- 
may, and the spree commenced. For two or three hours 
there would be a terribly sublime row up in the vicinage 
of the granite and dwarfed timber, that would reach 
down to the lower hills, and with its results set roaring 
the little rivulets and usually dusty arroyos, to swell the 
already turbid waters of the beautiful river. The daily 
dull monotony was wearing; I thought, more than once, 
that " hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and con- 
cluded I had struck the inspiration of the proverb. 

The Old Man sat on Jordan's rugged banks, waiting 
for that creek to clear up so that he could indulge him- 
self in his favorite amusement. He'd been there a 



132 UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

week, camped out, restricted to potato and flitch diet, 
and had not wet a line. His fly books were an aggrava- 
tion, and his split bamboo a source of misery. The 
evening would give promise of crystal water on the 
morrow, and each morning brought with it a stream of 
thick, yellow fluid. A trout would no more rise in it 
than upon the heaven-kissing hills that gathered the 
cause of his tribulation about their cloud-compelling 
peaks. The fir-crowned hills and majestic cliffs had 
lost their charm, the grasshopper had become a burden, 
and there was no more music in the roily water than in 
the mosquito's song. I presume he has forgotten all 
about it by this time, yet my soul cried out in sym- 
pathy. 

But I was better off than he. He had no John to 
console him with stories of leviathans caught by other 
rodsters "last summer." John would scorn anything 
less than a three-pound trout to embellish his romances; 
five, six, and even nine pounds were evolved in his 
imagination. I took him for a Vermont Yankee, but 
it transpired that the Ozark Mountains claimed him for 
their own, without the prospect of any other place set- 
ting up a demand for him when he dies — if he ever 
does. He is tall and thin, has a stoop in his shoulders 
and slouches in his gait; his garments, such as he has, 
fit him — not so well as they would the clothes line; 
he has a Roman nose and gray eyes, he chews the fra- 
grant "nigger head," and his saffron-hued incisors 
habitually caress his nether lip. His mouth is always 
open, and his scraggy beard would vie in symmetry 
with a patch of hazel brush demoralized by a Kansas 
cyclone. A few days ago I wagered him a quarter that 



UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 133 

he could not close his lips and keep them so three min- 
utes. I won the bet, but have not yet realized upon it. 
John is a booley, fortunately for the rest of humanity. 

Becoming a little impatient at John and the periodic- 
ally feculent condition of the river, I suggested to the 
Captain a run up to Antelope Park, twenty-five miles 
away, and a few casts for the denizens of certain minor 
tributaries to the Rio Grande. The suggestion proved 
agreeable to him. 

The next morning after an early breakfast we 
mounted the buckboard, and in company with the 
United States mail for somewhere, a nervous driver and 
a pair of wild mules, we arrived at our destination be- 
fore noon. Telegraphic facilities being somewhat lim- 
ited, our coming had not been heralded. Our driver 
left us with our traps in front of a comfortable-looking 
house, but it required half an hour to find the landlord. 
We had lived long enough in the country to recognize 
in every house a hotel. We would have taken our- 
selves and belongings into the first convenient room, 
but that a large black dog kindly took us under his im- 
mediate supervision. It b?gan to rain, but the dog 
gave no intimation whatever of inconvenience on that 
score; indeed, I think he rather enjoyed it. The Cap- 
tain, after we had admired the dog for a quarter of an 
hour, slipped his hand into his hip pocket. I don't 
know whether to attribute the dog's sudden disappear- 
ance to his superior intelligence and knowledge of the 
ways of the country, or to the coming of the landlord. 
Her greeting was cordial when she hove in sight: 

''Glad to see you gentlemen suppose youVe come a- 
fishin' didn't know as you was comin' or I'd a had din- 



134 UNDEE DIFFICULTIES. 

ner instead of bein' out to see to tliem colts the last two 
died and I don^t propose to have no more of that kind 
of business not if I know myself you bet these has been 
tended to right and I know it they was risin' three year 
and of course gettin' too big to run loose that husband 
of mine run away with another woman two year ago 
and he come back in less'n three months for me to take 
him back again but I told him to pack and he did since 
then I've ran this ranch e alone and propose so to do she 
was older than him '' 

" Can you give us a glass of milk," I broke in, irrev- 
y erently, on this bit of family history, delivered without 
a pause, with the end, if it had any, promising to out- 
live us and run into the next century, " you can get us 
something to eat later in the day." 

" Milk certainly you can have all the milk yon want 
and whatever else there is in the house to eat 'taint 
much but I'll do the best I can what's your business? " 

" Just at present we are in search of clear water and 
trout." 

" Plenty of trout in the creek though the river's rily 
and trout won't rise in rily water I suppose you know 
there's some big ones in the creek one took off a leader 
and fly for me yesterday but I'm goin' to snatch him 
out of that hole yet but what I want to know is what 
do 3^ou do for a livin' people have to rustle in this 
country or tramp." 

Having deposited our traps in the front room, I told 
her I was a preacher and the Captain a Sunday-school 
superintendent. 

" Well stranger I havn't got but mighty little use for 
gospel sharps they don't give anybody's house a good 



UXDER DIFFICULTIES. 135 

reputation leastways IVe so hearn tell but perhaps if you 
doesn't go psalm singin' and prayin' round here nobody 
'ill know any better you doesn't look much like 
preachers anyway." 

The conclusion was fired at us over her shoulder as 
she disappeared after the milk. I looked at the Cap- 
tain seriously and asked him if he thought he could 
stand it for a day or so; he said he thought he could 
by going out early and coming in late and going to 
sleep the balance of the time. 

The milk was rich and sweet, but a word of commen- 
dation inadvertently uttered by the Captain resulted in a 
history from birth to maternity, and the details of tra- 
vail of each of thirteen cows, with the condition of their 
offspring, their present and prospective value and prob- 
able increase. 

Leaving him to be further enlightened by this dis- 
quisition on bovine tocology, I escaped, and with rod 
and creel started up the creek. Five minutes after, and 
before I had lost sight of the house, a hail from the 
Captain brought me to a halt. 

''What puzzles me," said the Captain wearily, "is to 
learn how that landlord's husband had strength enough 
left to run away; he had three years of it; his vitality 
must have been something remarkable." 

" His coming back is harder to comprehend." 

"I think not; that gives me the only solution to the 
mystery. You see, he must have been a lunatic; that 
will account for his strength physically, and for his re- 
turning. But do you see that pool ? That's the home 
of the trout that took the landlord's leader. I'm going 
for him." 



136 Ui^DER DIFFICULTIES. 

"All right; I'll wait and see you do it." 

The Captain slipped down the bank, seeking the 
shelter of a clump of willows, and made a cast iato the 
center of a pool, the bare appearance of ^vhich sug- 
gested the certain lurking place of trout. He did 
not have out over twenty feet of line, and the coach- 
man lit cleverly, but without effect. Another cast, a 
little further toward the lower end, and yet no rise. A 
third — there is luck in odd numbers — where the water 
began to break at the head of the ripple, and the land- 
lord's trout got himself into trouble. There was no 
stiff cane pole with a tyro at the end of it this time, 
but a lithe Bethabara of seven ounces, in the hands of 
one who knew the use of it. It was a very pretty ten 
minutes' fight, when the despoiler of the landlord's 
tackle turned up his side and was towed ashore; the 
fish had a remnant of the broken leader still in its jaw. 
He weighed a little less than a pound, though we had 
been informed, as usual, that his weight was four 
pounds, at least. 

We trudged on up the creek, crossing four or five 
times to shorten the walk, until we reached a point two 
miles from the ranche. Each taking his side, we began 
moving down stream, snaking out the little fellows, 
from seven to ten inches in length, until we had more 
than enough for a late dinner. Concluding that the 
trout in these grounds might grow a little if let alone, 
we walked back. The manner in which the catch was 
served up with warm biscuit, fresh butter, and coffee 
with cream in it, made the conversation of the landlord 
interesting. 

We were advised, that, had we gone a mile further, 



UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 137 

larger trout would have rewarded us. It being affirmed 
beyond contradiction that the larger fish were holding 
a sort of salmon tea higher up stream, and the Rio 
Grande still being muddy, the next morning found us 
nearly a couple of miles further toward the head waters. 
But if there were any trout exceeding a half pound in 
any of the pools industriously tickled by us, they must 
have known who we were, and, therefore, declined an 
interview. 

This kind of sport had not been bargained for; a 
strict adherence to the trail, with diligence, would en- 
able us to reach the ranche in time for a lunch and the 
buckboard " going down." We made it, besides having 
time to bid our landlord adieu, the sound of her melodi- 
ous voice gradually dying out as the wild mules in- 
creased the distance between us. 

That evening the river gave promise, as usual, of 
being clear in the morning, always provided, of course, 
that it had not rained '' up above." But the next day 
we learned that the customary entertainment had taken 
place among the lofty peaks of the San Juan. When 
any man again tells you that " it never rains in Col- 
orado," remind him of Ananias' fate. 

A day did come, finally, and go, through all the 
hours of which the sun had an easy time of it in mak- 
ing things warm; in the evening we could fairly see 
the boulders in the river, and the next day it was clear. 
But back in the west the clouds had already gathered, 
and if any trout were to be captured we could not 
stand upon the order of our going. After breakfast 
half a dozen of us piled into the wagon, rode five miles 
down the river and began operations, which we were 



138 u:n"der difficulties. 

satisfied must cease by noon. For half an "hour or so 
the trout raised fairly, and then the casts increased 
from one to a dozen, and this was finally resolved into 
a devoted whipping of every likely place without avail. 

Toward Innch time I waded ashore, clambered up the 
bank ten feet above the river, and stood waiting for my 
comrade of the morning. He was standing in the stiff 
current, thigh deep, and faithfully sending his flies into 
a long eddy thirty feet away. I called him, but the 
response 1 received was that the place had never failed 
him, and he wanted to go the length of it. So I stood 
watching the play of his split bamboo and the curl of 
the light silk line; now and then the heel of his leader 
would strike, but generally the coachman on the end 
was first to touch the water. He had told me only the 
day before, though he acknowledged it was beyond his 
skill, that in casting, one should never use more than 
the forearm; that to confine the movement to the 
wrist was still better. The awkwardness of the full- 
stretched arm swinging back and forth was apparent, 
but to one unaccustomed to light tackle the habit is 
hard to overcome. I told him to keep his arm down, 
and he did for two or three casts; then up it went 
aofain, he foro-ettina: the admonition in his desire to 
reach a few feet further. When I reminded him of it 
he looked round, laughingly, and said he couldn't. Just 
then my attention was called to a pilgrim with weak 
eyes peering out from under the broken-down brim of 
an old felt hat, sallow as the mug it covered; his butter- 
nut jeans tucked in his boots, and his woolen shirt 
suggestive of other occupants than himself. 

" What does a pole like that cost, Mister? " motioning 



UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 139 

with his head to the bamhoo I held in my hand. Being 
disposed to treat everybody with civility, I told him. 

'' I don't think anybody kin ketch fish with that 'ar 
thing, 'cept little ones. I like one o' them long stiff 
fellers to jerk 'em with; I shouldn't think this here 
thing was no account," and he gesticulated with his 
head again. " Now, the best way to git fish is with a 
net; now, I wish I had a net; look at that 'ar manthar, 
he'll not git a fish in a week." 

" Mark you, my friend ! " The libel stepped back a 
couple of paces; I don't know why. " If you catch fish 
in that way, they will cost you ten dollars each," I con- 
tinued mildly. ''Try it, I wish 3^011 would; there is a 
standing reward of five hundred dollars for such fisher- 
men as you claim to be; perhaps I might get the money 
and you a rope." 

" See here, Mister, I ain't got no net; I ain't goin' to 
ketch no fish; I'm goin' to Silverton; I don't keer 'bout 
fishin' no way; hits mighty po' business." 

" The sooner you get to Silverton the better — every 
man, woman and child in this park wants to earn that 
five hundred dollars." 

What further I might have said I don't know, but 
just then my friend with the split bamboo hailed me; he 
had made a strike, to his own surprise as well as mine, 
for the water had become quite cloudy. With his face 
down stream and rod well up, he was talking to his vic- 
tim much as one would address a fractious colt. It was 
pleasant to listen to his expressions of assurance that 
no harm should come to his troutship if he would only 
behave himself, followed by a threatening admonition 
at every rush for liberty. If my tall friend was not 



140 



UNDEE DIFFICULTIES. 



skilful enough to carry away tlie first prize at a casting 
tournament, he knew at least how to handle and save 
the victim he had struck. Having quite exhausted him, 
he was reeled in till the line could be grasped, and the 
trout was drawn cautiously within reach; the line was 
then changed to the rod hand, and with a quick move- 
ment, evidently not acquired without practice, that 
trout was scooped up against the angler's stomach; the 
next movement was to run his dexter finger into the 
trout's mouth, press his thumb upon its neck and break 
it, the fish being held in the left hand, and the three 
fingers of the right holding the rod. Having thus killed 
him, the hook was removed, and he was held up triumph- 
antly to be admired. The rest of the party had arrived 
in time to see the close of the struggle with a handsome 
two pounds and three ounces of salmon-colored luxury. 
The misery under the felt hat had departed. 




HIS SERMOI^ 



/OHN DOE — and by Doe I do not mean the Doe 
ex dem. Gorges vs. Webb, nor Doe, lessee of Gib- 
bon, vs. Pott. My John Doe was not a Doe of 
fiction, but a gentleman of flesh and blood. He was 
not a great man, it is true, except in the matter of tem- 
perance and cleanliness. As he has not gone into his- 
tory because of either of those virtues, and has no doubt 
been, in the course of nature, long since gathered to his 
fathers, leaving no issue, I may write of him without 
fear of giving offense. 

The unblemished linen and highly polished shoes of 
Mr. Doe always challenged my boyish admiration. The 
enviable condition of his shoes I could account for. He 
cleaned them with his own hands, I knew, because I 
had, on more than one occasion, discovered him in the 
act. Whatever Mr. Doe did, he endeavored, at least, to 
do well. There were no dull spots on his shoes, but an 
exquisite evenness of polish pervaded their whole surface 
from heel to toe and from top to shank. In connection 
with the linen they indicated to me the possession by 
their owner of an always desirable credit. I had been 
taught to believe that no gentleman ever permitted 
himself to be seen in foxy shoes or soiled linen. It did 
not follow, of course, that all men in clean shoes and 



142 HIS SERMOK. 

linen were gentlemen, nor did I so understand it, but 
that the fortunate possessor of these well Qonditioned 
articles of apparel presented, as it were, a prima facie 
case for my consideration. They were component parts, 
so to speak, in the absence of which, the accomplish- 
meut of the structure suggested would be an impossi- 
bility. The garments of Mr. Doe were rarely new, as 
a whole; a new coat, for instance, was not always seen 
in his company with a new pair of trousers. Whether 
he labored under the impression that the display of an 
entire new suit upon his person would mark him as a 
man of too much magnificince, or whether the condi- 
tion of his finances deterred him, I am not prepared to 
say. But whether new, or napless and white at the 
seams, they were always innocent of dust. His linen, 
however, was a mystery to me; certainly he did not 
himself do it up, he kept no servant and it was not 
sent out. It may be surmised that I had rather an in- 
timate acquaintance with the domestic establishment 
of Mr. Doe. I did, and it was not savory — I mean 
when considered from the broom and soap and water 
stand-point. 

The house of Mr. Doe was the home of odors, wherein 
the fragrance of boiled cabbage and onions seemed to 
wage perpetual warfare for supremacy. The pattern 
of the carpet in the best room has escaped my memory, 
but a spot in it will always linger with me as fixed as 
in the carpet. This spot was about the size of an ordi- 
nary chair seat, and was always associated in my mind 
with a ham, a twenty pound ham; as if the hind-quarter 
of a magnificent porker had suddenly melted its shape 
into the brown and orange tints of the best carpet and 



HIS sermo:n". 143 

refused, with porcine obstinacy, to come out. The fur- 
niture, as long as I saw it, was in a chronic state of im- 
mature cleanliness, and impressed me with the idea that 
some one hal been round with a wet cloth, and, having 
been suddenl}^ called to the front door, had neglected to 
come back. 

Mrs. Doe I remember as a tall, thin lady, in a black 
calico gown with little round gray and brown spots; 
and I have a recollection of debating in my mind as to 
the original color of those spots, and of concluding that 
they had at one time been uniforml}^ white, and that 
that time must have been long before I had enjoyed the 
acquaintance of Mrs. Doe. The complexion of Mrs. 
Doe was dark, her eyes brown, and her hair, which was 
abundant and black, always looked dusty and as if about 
to tumble down. I remember seeing the lady once 
seated in a Windsor chair with her heels resting on the 
front edge — at least I supposed her heels were there — 
her chin resting on her knees and her hands clasped 
round her ankles. She said to me upon that occasion 
that she was not well, and when I sympathized with 
her I wondered whether it was cabbage or onions, or 
both. But as I have to do principally with Mr. Doe, I 
trust I may not be charged with lack of gallantry, if, 
without apology, I take leave of his estimable lady. 

Mr. Doe worked in blue cotton overalls six days in 
the week, as a maker of watches, and walked on the sev- 
enth, the weather permitting; or he walked on the first 
and worked on the other six days, as you please. He 
always walked with a cane; why, was also for some time 
a mystery, he being an active man with no apparent 
use for support of that character. As a boy, I had an 



144 HIS SERMON". 

interest in bothhis occupation and amusement; an am- 
bition to possess a result of the one and to join him in 
the other. Too young, and withal beset by the poverty 
usually attendant upon youth, to have the first, and de- 
terred by maternal influences from indulging in the 
latter, were among my tribulations of that period. I 
contemplated the bliss of walking with Mr. Doe with 
an eagerness hard to overcome; and T have sometimes 
felt that the fear of mere reproof, unaided by the re- 
spect in which I held the tender branches of the beauti- 
ful shellbark in our back yard, would not have prevented 
my running awaj^ One other obstacle conspired with 
those already suggested, more potent perhaps than 
either: permission was a condition precedent to the ac- 
quiescence of Mr. Doe. 

But there came a day when my best friend was away 
from home, and I felt emboldened to interrupt my other 
best friend in the act of putting the fork into the breast 
of a beautifully browned canvas-back, with the sugges- 
tion, that on the morrow, with his permission, I would 
be pleased to take a walk with Mr. Doe. 

"Take a walk with Mr. Doe!" The wings and legs 
of the duck were severed upon reaching the exclama- 
tion point, and the blade of the carver was finding its 
way delicately through the plump breast and becoming 
dim with the roseate tint, that denoted the skill of the 
cook, when he continued: 

" To-morrow is Sunday, and you should go to Sun- 
day school and to church." 

My bosom became as bare of hope as the carcass 
before me was of meat. 

" What would your mother say?" 



HIS SEKMOi^. 145 

*'I dunno." 

"Ah, you are not certain, tlien? " 

Thinking, perhaps, that he was pressing me too 
closely in the wrong direction for his purpose, he gave 
me some relief by inquiring the direction of Mr. Doe's 
proposed tour. 

" Out in the country." 

" Mr. Doe is going hunting, I suppose? " 

"Oh, no! he wouldn't hunt Sunday; I don't think 
he's fond of hunting; and, besides, isn't it wicked to 
hunt on Sundays, and shoot off your gun and make a 
noise?" 

" Perhaps it is, but — " upon reflection, at this dis- 
tance of time, I think my interrogator was about put- 
ting a leading question, suggesting an analogy beyond 
my capacity to distiuguish, except in the matter of the 
noise. At all events he hesitated, — "but, as I am in- 
formed, Mr. Doe generally remains away all day when 
he takes his walks on Sunday — you will lose your din- 
ner." 

" I shall not want any dinner." 

" No, of course — not till noon; but take a lunch, 
and be a good boy." 

I do not remember at this late day whether or not, 
upon the foregoing announcement, I apprehended that 
Mr. Doe might, through some possible contingency, vary 
his custom, and go walking Saturday afternoon. I did, 
however, deem it expedient to leave my dinner unfin- 
ished, with a view of communicating with him without 
delay. Receiving his assurance that he would take me 
to walk with him on the morrow, I went back to my 
pastry. The sun came up as usual the next day; there 
10 



146 HIS SERMON". 

had been no convulsion of nature, in our vicinity at least ; 
the morning was cloudless, without any prospect of 
untoward circumstance to interfere with our anticipated 
pleasure. 

Mr. Doe announced himself at our front gate im- 
mediately after breakfast; he would no doubt have 
come to the door had I not obviated the necessity for 
his so doing by neglecting my coffee, and nervously 
anticipating him on the porch. He had his cane with 
him, and his shoes and linen presented their ordinary, 
unobjectionable appearance, as if defiant of criticism. 

Our course was through the city, westerly some three 
miles, and out to a road beyond what in those days was 
called " The Heights." The neighborhood was new to 
me, and Mr. Doe took pleasure, seemingly, in pointing 
out various objects of interest, not forgetting walnut 
and hickory trees, and even persimmons, that gave 
promise of good things after frost. Among other 
things, I remember he called my attention to a blue 
and misty lookiug object a great distance off, which 
looked in shape like the Pyramids of Egypt, as shown 
in my geography. This, he told me, was the Sugar 
Loaf; and when I asked him why it was so named, he 
thought because it did not resemble a sugar loaf. But 
it was my first mountain, and I have always carried 
with me a pleasant remembrance of it. Our road lay 
by an old frame house, with a porch and well, at which 
we stopped to drink. The house, he told me, was 
known as the " Bull's Head;" why it was so named he 
was unable to inform me. Finally we reached the 
vicinity of a covered bridge, spanning a fine stream. 
He said it was the " Chain Bridge," but not seeing any 



HIS SERMOiq^. 147 

chains, I felt compelled to inquire why everything 
away from home seemed to bear titles that were evi- 
dently not appropriate. Not being able to impart to 
me any satisfactory information upon that head, he 
called my attention to the Little Falls; I learned these 
were called Little, because there were Big Falls further 
up stream. 

Mr. Doe informed me that this was a good place to 
fish. Unskilled in the gentle art, but curious, I sug- 
gested that it would afford me infinite delight to see him 
fish. He then wanted to know if I would not like to 
try my hand; being informed of my inability to do so 
through lack of knowledge and tackle, he forthwith cut 
a small pole, and from the hidden recess of his coat pro- 
duced a line with a float and hook. Having rigged me 
oat, he proceeded to unscrew the ferrule of his cane, and 
lo ! the inseparable walking stick was transformed into a 
rod; his own manufacture, he said, as he held it out with 
the air of a critic and pardonable self-complacency. 
The recesses of his coat were again resorted to, resulting 
in a tin mustard box well filled with angle worms. 
Baiting my hook, he stationed me on a large rock and 
directed me to drop the lure into the gentle eddy be- 
neath. That float, I remember, was painted red on the 
top, and looked to me like a highly colored bird's egg 
drifting out of its element. Being informed that to 
watch it was my business, I did so with assiduity. Pres- 
ently it bobbed up and down, then fell over on its side, 
then again bobbed up and down as though it were sen- 
tient and in sound of a fiddle exuding a hornpipe. I 
inquired of Mr. Doe the meaning of this, and was ad- 



148 HIS SERMON". 

monislied by him to " look out," that I had a nibble. 
Of all things desirable to me at that crisis, next to a 
bite, was a nibble. There was contained in it a fund of 
encouragement absolutely infinite, that left hope in the 
distance and resolved itself at once into faith. 

"Now, jerk!" exclaimed Mr. Doe, as the float started 
off rapidly and suddenly disappeared. I jerked. And 
behold! a bit of burnished silver but little longer than 
my hand, its dorsal as suddenly expanded as if moved 
by electricity, standing stiff and defiant upon the sud- 
den change of elements, only a shade duller than the 
sun's rays, as it flashed into the light, — my first white 
perch, and ray initial piscatorial triumph. Proud! 
The result of the accomplished details of section two 
of article two of our glorious bulwark announced to 
the fortunate choice of the majority of the unsoaped 
out o^' the seventeen millions and odd of the free and 
enlightened, placed him upon no loftier ground; I 
would have patronized His Excellency at that sublime 
moment. 

'^ Tt was born in you," said Mr. Doe, as he relieved 
the captive and placed him iu my outstretched hands. 
My perception of Mr. Doe's meaning was intuitive, and 
I suggested that I would like conviction impressed upon 
the mind of my other best friend by a personal exam- 
ination of this peerless perch. Nothing could be more 
easily accomplished; it was slipped on a stout string 
and consigned to an isolated pool. During the ensuing 
hour my attention was divided between the jail of my 
captive, the red-top cork and the actions of Mr. Doe; 
that gentleman had stationed himself a few yards below 



HIS SERMOIfr. 149 

me, and had secured quite a respectable string of perch, 
while I had added several, beside two tobacco-boxes, to 
my own. 

At lunch it dawned upon me to inquire of Mr. Doe 
if he did not think it wicked to fish on the Sabbath. 
My recollection is that he felt loth to set himself up 
as a judge in the matter. But the leaping stream, the 
picturesque rocks, the trees and sweet air had attrac- 
tions for him, and he could enjoy them but one day in 
seven; for those who had nothing else to do the case 
might be different; he thought that perhaps education 
had much to do with the matter — " One man esteemeth 
one day above another; another esteemeth every day 
alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own 
mind;" said Mr. Doe. 

Somehow it crept into ray youthful imagination, as I 
listened to him, that the beautiful river, the rocks and 
the trees, had been created for him, but that he claimed 
no monopoly. Yet no rich man could purchase them 
nor deprive him of his property; that for this he was 
thankful, and entertained for the philanthropic Creator 
of these the same sort of reverence, but in a new and 
quiet way, that I had been accustomed to hear must, to 
be acceptable, be expressed within doors. And I won- 
dered, if he should be so unfortunate as to die then and 
there, whether he would go to heaven. My doubts as 
to myself, and the propriety of my participation in his 
peculiar w^orship were grave in the extreme. 

The doubts, however, did not prevent my renewing 
the fascinating occupation of the forenoon, and thereby 
adding a few more victims to my already questionable 
spoils. 



150 HIS SERMOK. 

The shadows began to lengthen and grow quite gro- 
tesque in their attenuation, before I inquired of Mr. Doe 
as to his intentions about returning. He gave as his 
reason for not going sooner that he deferred to the preju- 
dices of others to the extent of avoiding any aggressive 
expression of his own opinions, by trailing his fish 
through town in daylight. That while he saw no im- 
propriety in passing the Sabbath out-doors in the fresh 
air and sunlight, there were those who would be shocked 
at what they deemed a desecration. He felt responsible 
to a higher authority for his acts, and would render his 
accounts at the proper forum in due course of time. 
Meanwhile he proposed to follow the admonition of the 
great apostle: " If it he j^ossible^ as much as lieth in you, 
live peaceabl}^ with all men." Upon this he transformed 
his rod again into a walking stick, carefully stowed away 
the lines, and threw the remaining bait into the stream; 
we gathered up what had been vouchsafed us and started 
for home. 

The condition of Mr. Doe's mind was unquestionably 
tranquil, while mine was incumbered with doubts, yet 
devoid of apprehension, in the matter of serious conse- 
quences, at least. Oar walk home was accomplished 
satisfactorily, the latter part of it being in the dark 
through the neighborhoods where we were best known, 
the twilight being short in that latitude and gas then 
only a possibility. He who had given me permission to 
go walking expressed severe astonishment at the evi- 
dences of the day's doings presented to him. Mr. Doe 
was not a large man, but his shoulders were broad; he 
improved upon our original ancestor by assuming the 
responsibility. My enthusiastic portrayal of the de- 



HIS SERMOi;r. 151 

lights experienced were listened to, I thought, with in- 
terest; I did not go supperless to bed, and I had some of 
the fish for breakfast. The diet was no novelty, but the 
flavor upon that occasion far surpassed that of any 
former experience, and no fish since has tasted so sweet 
as that first perch. The burnished silver tint had given 
way to an exquisite brown, delicate as the hue of an 
amber cloud painted by the evening rays of an autumn 
sun. Crisp, and with a fragrance to subdue the censo- 
rious palate of an epicure, he invited me to remove his 
dorsal, and lay bare in equal halves the firm, white 
meat; next, without a hair's-breadth torn, the backbone 
cleaved as smoothly as a type from its matrix, and ap- 
petite and palate joined in adulation. I would cherish 
the memory tenderly, but, above all, the text and 

sermon of Mr. Doe. 

BOURGEOIS. 




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